


The Price of Salvation (translated from Russian)

by Woland



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Memory Loss, Tw: Non-consensual touching in chapter 5, tw: dubious consent in chapter 6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2020-10-27 18:51:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 27,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20765252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Woland/pseuds/Woland
Summary: The body switch wasn't quite as successful as they had hoped. After returning into his own body, Aziraphale lost his memory and is now refusing to recognize Crowley as his friend.  But that's only half the problem...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Цена спасения](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19990576) by [MaryEgo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryEgo/pseuds/MaryEgo). 

> I read this story and found myself sucked into another translation project :) It was just too good to pass. MaryEgo's tale is brilliantly angsty and deserves to be shared with wider audiences
> 
> ***I decided to combine the first two chapters, since the second chapter was short. Longer chapters will be posted separately.

Chapter 1

“Alright, let’s sum up… You’re saying that I’m the owner of this bookshop, but in the last year I sold only about a dozen books and even that with great reluctance…” Aziraphale ticked off a finger and threw an uncertain look at Crowley, who nodded in confirmation. “Moreover, I’m over six thousand years old and I’m an angel.”

A second finger was ticked off, and Crowley nodded more vigorously.

“And you are my friend, who also happens to be a demon, and the two of us recently saved the world from the apocalypse, for which our bosses nearly discorporated both of us. But we tricked them by switching bodies…,” the angel ran out of fingers on his hand and no longer bothered trying to hide the notes of mistrust that threaded through his voice, “but when we were returning to our own bodies, something went wrong, and…”

“Yes! And you fell asleep for a whole month! And now you don’t remember a damn thing!” the demon concluded impatiently, throwing his arms in the air. “How many times have we been over this list already?! My tongue is gonna fall off soon with having to repeat myself over and over again! Are you, at least, _starting_ to remember anything, featherbrain?” 

The angel and the demon stood in the middle of the bookshop and glared at one another. Of course, Crowley’s eyes were covered with dark glasses, so one could only guess as to his particular level of annoyance. And he was annoyed as hell. The demon itched to rip apart everything around him. Thoughts raced around in his demonic ginger head, finding no solution to the current mess. Perhaps Aziraphale needed something of a shock therapy, and, if he were to burn down the bookshop, the angel would finally come to his senses?

Yes, switching bodies is a risky business, especially when it’s done by an angel and a demon, but, still, Crowley was not expecting there to be such awful consequences… Of course, getting dissolved in holy water would have been even less pleasant… But still! First the angel wouldn’t wake up for a whole month, making him go out of his mind with worry. And now this… How could Azirphale forget… him! Crowley?!

“Well, are you starting to remember anything?”

The angel didn’t need to say anything – the answer was written all over his sullen little face. He spread out his hands in a helpless gesture.

“I need a drink,” the demon murmured miserably and fell into the chair, snapping his fingers… And winced instantly when nothing happened. Of course. He completely forgot that Aziraphale was not the only one having problems. The demon had a hard time controlling his magic after the return, even though he felt its distinct presence within him. Just as he felt Aziraphale’s angelic essence, which was still there, but… what? Asleep?

The demon didn’t feel like getting up from his chair and dragging himself over to the cupboard, so he snapped his fingers a few more times with exasperated fury. There was a rubbery pop, and the angel stared in amazement at the table that now displayed a bottle and a couple of wine glasses. 

“Oh, wow! Is that some sort of magic trick? I think…,” the angel frowned, then smiled sheepishly. Crowley leaned forward in hopeful anticipation… “I think I like magic!”

The demon let out a filthy curse that made the angel blush to the very tips of his ears. Crowley poured the wine into the glasses, gulped down his own and pushed the second one toward the angel, who sat across from him, frozen in embarrassment 

“Go on, it’ll help your brain relax. I can see it’s all tangled up in there from thinking too much.”

***

Aziraphale shook his head, sorrowful. He truly did feel quite lost, as though he was left in a field without a single guiding landmark and he could do nothing more than peer into the bleary shadows on the horizon… 

Aziraphale remembered perfectly how to read and write in several languages; he knew the purpose for all the items surrounding him, and he felt a rush of love whenever he looked at the stacks of books. Perhaps this place really was his home. But the man named Crowley awakened strange feelings within him – something close to unease but also some odd sort of aching worry inside him, like a violin playing a single mournful note.

The restless, prickly energy, the sharp movements, the harsh words, the dark glasses that hide the eyes – all of that felt foreign to Aziraphale. Next to Crowley he felt constantly on edge. And yet the angel had a hard time even tearing his gaze away from the demon, as though he was afraid of losing something important during those split seconds of not watching him. 

Maybe Crowley truly was a demon, although it seemed strange to believe that… Or not? A demon… Yes, there was, indeed, something about him that made him resemble a supposed resident of Hell. Take his smell, for instance. Crowley smelled of sulfur and smoke, he was surrounded by a heavy cloak of danger and unpredictability, as if he could burst into flames at any moment and burn down everyone around him. 

Aziraphale was scared of him and was quite prepared to admit it, even if only to himself. The only reason he hasn’t yet shown the demon the door was because it would have been impolite to do so… Besides, Crowley was the only connection to his previous life. Even if said connection wasn’t very reliable and quite risky to grab on to. That’s why when the demon pushed the wine glass closer to him, Aziraphale pretended that he didn’t notice. Instead, he turned back to his books, gathered his courage.

“Are you sure…,” Aziraphale said, feeling the demon’s gaze burning a hole between his shoulder blades. “I mean, did you use the correct term when you called us _friends_?”

Several seconds passed in silence that made Aziraphale’s skin crawl. Then Crowley hissed like an actual snake,

“Not friendssss? What then?” 

Aziraphale was afraid to turn around; something inside him was churning, and his stomach suddenly felt very cold and empty. But he went on, stubbornly,

“We are too different. It’s not that I’m doubting your words, but I think that we simply wouldn’t have been able to become so close as to be friends… or even mates.” He swallowed against a suddenly dry mouth. “Especially, if you are truly a demon and I’m an angel, aren’t we supposed to be… well, enemies?”

In the next instant there was a sharp clang of shattered glass that made the angel jump. He turned around, all set to defend his life, but nobody was planning on killing him. Not yet. Pieces of wine glasses trembled on the floor, and the enraged demon stood by the chair, glaring at the angel. Strands of red hair fell on his face; his glasses were pushed up on his forehead, revealing yellow eyes with slitted pupils.

_“A demon! A real demon!” _the angel thought, backing away into a bookshelf. His lips moved on their own accord, a whisper tumbling forth,

“Get thee behind me, foul fiend…”

Crowley flinched as if someone knocked him on the head with a book. He shook his head, took a slow deep breath, pushed the hair away from his face and flicked the glasses back into place. A painful-looking grin twisted his lips.

“Very well, _angel_…,” he spat. “Maybe it’s for the best, eh? Maybe it’s all part of that Ineffable Plan you love so much. Now that humanity is no longer in danger there are no reasons for us to stay close to each other either. I don’t know about you, but I definitely have other things to do. Evil seeds won’t plan themselves, you know. So I don’t have time to bother with someone who won’t even acknowledge me as a friend. You’ll be fine.”

He turned and headed toward the door with an exaggerated swagger. The demon tried to appear relaxed, but Aziraphale could see the tension in the line of his shoulders and in the tightness of his voice that sounded as though some invisible hand was squeezing the demon’s throat. 

“Have a nice life, angel!”

Crowley waved his hand and walked out into the gathering twilight, leaving the angel to blink after him in worried confusion. 

**Chapter 2**

Crowley’s heart hurt. Or, rather, it hurt in the spot where a human heart would be. He felt as though someone drove a Hellhound's claw deep into his chest and was now slowly twisting it clockwise. 

Crowley raced through the snow-covered nighttime London, going twice the speed limit, but there was no one beside him to yell at him to slow down. In his mind he could still see Aziraphale’s distrustful gaze, his tightly pressed lips, the tense line of his jaw. There was so much suspicion in his voice! _“Too different”?_ It never bothered anyone before! Still, an angel is supposed to be suspicious of a demon, right? Even if that angel forgot that he had wings.

_“Well, I guess everything has come full circle,”_ Crowley thought bitterly, pushing the pedal into the floor. His insides were burning as if he had swallowed holy water. Or if he had been completely forgotten by someone he couldn’t imagine his life without. Someone, from whom a mere glance could send his human heart racing and his very non-human soul aflutter. The demon never dared to give a name to those feelings, but he always knew that Aziraphale needed to be near him – happy, healthy and at peace, otherwise, what was the point? Why did he go through the bother of saving this fucking world, if one soft as a cloud angel wasn’t going to be part of this future?

He wanted to bang his head against the steering wheel. Who was he kidding? He wasn’t gonna go anywhere! To leave the angel all alone in this world, without the memory of him… What kind of a bastard would he be if he did that?

“Damn! Damn! Damn!” the demon growled, barely making the corner and slamming on the breaks. The resulting gust of wind kicked up a cloud of snow dust that blocked his vision. If it were not for a demonic miracle, Bentley would have likely crashed right into a flower shop on the corner. But Crowley loved his car too much to allow for such travesty. Therefore, Bentley _miraculously _came to a stop right in the middle of that turn, disregarding all laws of physics.

It took the demon a while to recover after that surge of magic. His powers felt viscous somehow and he had a hard time making them obey. His chest hurt, and not just because of the angel. Cautiously, the demon touched the area over his solar plexus. The skin there prickled in response.

Feeling the first spike of apprehension, the demon unbuttoned the top buttons of his shirt and looked at his skin. 

An inky black spot was spreading slowly across his chest, just below his solar plexus at the bottom edge of his ribs. Bluish-black vessels, reminiscent of jellyfish tentacles, fanned out from it on all sides. Crowley saw something similar once on a mortal, dying from the last stages of blood poisoning. 

“What the hell,” the demon murmured, examining the strange illness that somehow inflicted not only his mortal corporation but his demonic essence as well. He tried touching the infection with his magic, but, instead of fighting the illness, his magical energy was sucked away, dropped as if into an abyss, and another newly darkened blood vessel zigzagged across his skin and began to ache.

“Fuck!” the demon swore, collapsing backwards against his seat. What if a similar ink stain was spreading across the angel’s white-skinned chest? He felt sick at the thought. “F-f-fuck!”

So much for saving the world…. Who was going to save _them_ now?


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 3**

After the demon left, the angel felt both better and worse. On the one hand, the suffocating dark aura was finally gone from the bookshop, but on the other hand there was loneliness which turned out to be no better. Paradoxically, he felt the urge to run after the demon and bring him back. 

_“It’s all demonic influence,” _the angel tried to reassure himself as he walked past his bookshelves, running his fingers along the spines, but his thoughts kept coming back to their last conversation and his gaze kept getting drawn to the falling snow outside his window. What if he offended Crowley without even meaning to do so? Yes… the demon looked positively offended and exceedingly angry. He looked ready to jump down someone’s throat at any moment. And those eyes of his? How could anyone trust a creature with such terrifying eyes? No wonder he was hiding them behind those shades. 

Aziraphale was no longer bothered by the idea that Crowley was a demon. But he was still reluctant to accept his own angelic essence. He tried to recreate at least some fragments of his past in his memory, but he kept running into a blank page with a single bright spot – today’s day.

His memory began from the moment he woke up today. Six hours ago the angel forced his eyes open and found himself in bed on the second floor of the bookshop. He didn’t even have time to get properly surprised by that fact, when the door to the bedroom burst open and some stranger who looked like he had just stepped off the shiny cover of some modern fashion magazine burst inside… Although, how would Aziraphale know about magazines? Still, that information was somehow stored in his head, while there wasn’t a single thing there about the red-headed stranger, so when the latter tried to approach, Aziraphale flinched, held up his hands in front of him, and shouted, “Stay where you are!”

The one who later introduced himself as Crowley froze on the threshold. The dark glasses kept his emotions hidden, but something was rapidly changing in his predatory features. Perhaps he noticed how scared the angel looked when he stared back at him? 

Crowley recounted for him different episodes from their shared history well into the evening, spicing them up with sarcastic comments and lingering looks. He moved lazily through the shop as if it was his second home, even though, according to his own words, with the exception of this past month, he never even stayed here overnight.

The angel could easily sense Crowley’s true essence. His sinewy form was surrounded by an invisible whirlwind of chaos, sadness and fear, which he instilled in everything that he approached, and, most notably, the angel himself. 

A demon. Yes, he probably was exactly that. But what did he want with Aziraphale? The loss of memory – could that have been his doing? If only there was a way for him to get in touch with Heaven… But Aziraphale wasn’t even completely sure that he belonged there. After all, unlike Crowley, he wasn’t able to make objects appear, and his eyes looked very much human, if, perhaps, a bit too bright. And then there was this extra weight, too… Wouldn’t he have been able to rid himself of such nuisance as a few extra pounds if he was a real angel?

And then there was that conversation about “friends”, and Crowley broke the wine glasses, waved his hand and disappeared in the gathering twilight… It didn’t look like he was planning to come back. The thought echoed depressingly in his heart, but Aziraphale stubbornly chased the blues away. Why should be pine over someone so dangerous? The two of them may as well have been from different worlds! They would be better off without each other. Especially, since, God only knows, what the demon was up to.

That’s why, having been left to his own devices, Aziraphale decided to take a good look around. Perhaps the key to the puzzle was somewhere right under his nose, and all he had to do was find it?

Aziraphale started with books. His gaze lingered on one, whose title seemed vaguely familiar. He pulled it out, opened it on a random page, and nearly dropped it. A picture of a serpent, pressed against the ground by a winged angel was staring back at him. The serpent had the exact same eyes as Crowley. The sign under the picture read: “The Vanquished Tempter”.

The angel closed down the shop, climbed into an armchair, and dug into the book.

***

Overnight the pile of books next to Aziraphale’s chair grew to a fairly sizeable stack. And Aziraphale was quite certain that he had read all of them at some point in the past. Contents of one book or another would come back to him the moment his eyes would scan the first line. The angel didn’t even notice that the night had passed and that it was already morning, but somehow he didn’t feel the least bit tired or hungry. Maybe Crowley was right, and he wasn’t a mere human after all?

Someone knocked on the door, startling the angel. He walked up to the door, dreading to see the demon there. But it was only an old woman with gray hair and a radiant smile.

“Mister Fell, good morning!” she greeted him good-naturedly, when the angel opened the door. “Did my book order arrive?” 

_“Fell?”_ the angel wondered silently, following his customer. Perhaps this was his chance to find out something about himself?

Out loud he said, “No, I’m afraid the order delivery has been delayed… But, perhaps, you wouldn’t mind having a cup of tea with me?”

“Oh, that would be wonderful!” the old woman exclaimed brightly, moving her head as if she was looking for someone. “Where’s your husband? Forgive my nosiness, but I thought that you two always had breakfast together on Mondays… Oh, did I say something wrong?” the woman fretted, as she watched a deep frown form on Aziraphale’s face. 

“Husband?” the angel echoed, somehow managing to blush and pale at the same time. And rushed to busy himself with making tea to try to escape the woman’s all-too-inquisitive gaze.

“Well, yes, your partner,” the old woman let out an embarrassed little cough. “I apologize if I made you uncomfortable, but I was under the impression that you were not exactly hiding your relationship with Mr. Crowley…”

“Uhm… And how long has it been since you’ve noticed that we were… well, together?” the angel squeezed out, pouring the tea into cups. His ears were burning, bright like stop lights. Were they truly involved like _that_?

“Oh, my dear, the first time I came to your bookshop was about ten years ago. That’s when I noticed. And it was impossible not to,” she winked at him, accepting the steaming cup. “No matter what time I’d walk in, there you’d be, together. Arguing or bickering, but never with any aggression, always with love. And the way you look at him, Mister Fell – a blind man would notice!” She let out a silly little laugh, covering her mouth with her fist. “You two are so different on the outside, but you’re like a match and a matchbox – made to be together. One flick and you’re both aflame!” She sighed dreamily, perhaps remembering something from the wild days of her youth. “Oh, tea is wonderful, Mister Fell, but I suppose I should be going, since my order has not arrived yet. And you two should patch things up, the sooner the better. It’s gotten so gloomy in here, and even you lost your smile. Well, see you later.” 

The old woman left, and Aziraphale finished his tea in one convulsive gulp. The hot liquid burned his throat, but the angel didn’t notice. His thoughts sizzled menacingly, threatening to explode and wreak a mini apocalypse inside the angel’s head. 

All of a sudden Crowley’s emotions appeared to Aziraphale in a completely different light. If he were to allow even for a moment… If he were to assume that they had been seeing each other… Oh, dear God… No wonder the demon grew so angry – the angel must have hurt him terribly with his words about “friends”. Even if Aziraphale didn’t feel the love toward him, he simply could not turn a blind eye to his own callousness. Even if _such _truth made him burn with embarrassment.

What if Crowley really didn’t wish him ill? What if he kept quiet about their… er… partnership to avoid scandalizing Aziraphale when he saw that he lost his memory, and Aziraphale, instead of being grateful, said the most awful things in the world to him! What if the demon… loves him?! If demons are even capable of love, that is…. No, this is all some kind of nonsense! The poor old lady must have been mistaken! Still, if he were to assume…

Guilt and shame over his own ungratefulness filled the angel’s soul. He went to call Crowley to apologize, but he quickly realized that he didn’t know his phone number. Moreover, he didn’t know anything about the red-haired demon at all… Hurriedly, the angel tried to look for any information about his previous calls on his telephone, but ended up clicking on the voicemail messages instead.

_“Hey there, angel! Drowned in your dust yet? Don’t forget about our lunch date at the Ritz today, otherwise I’ll be forced to eat you. Yes, yes, demons get very angry when they’re hungry!” _the answering machine chuckled in Crowley’s voice. The message was dated two months ago.

The angel listened to several more messages, and every time Crowley’s voice would invite him to the theater, to a restaurant, or to the opera, or would ask him for news about someone named Adam, or would complain about his hellish bosses. He had no choice but to acknowledge that their relationship definitely resembled what humans call “seeing each other”. Good thing they lived separately, at least…. Or was that, too, a lie for the greater good?

For the next hour the angel searched his entire shop, looking for things that could belong to the demon. Thank God, there weren’t many of them, but there were still enough to come to the conclusion that Crowley was a frequent guest here. There were several spare pairs of sunglasses that were collecting dust in a cabinet; in a closet the angel found a jacket that was clearly not his size; and in the pantry he found a jewelry box with a black feather, of all things, hidden inside it. A feather that was too big to belong to a bird. Although… there are giant birds, aren’t there? Ones that smell of sulfur and smoke?

No, he could not keep deluding himself any longer. 

Biting his lips, Aziraphale tried to make a return call to the number that was saved in his phone, but he was met with an answering machine.

_“Hi, this is Anthony Crowley. You know what to do. Do_ _it_ _with_ _style__!”_

Beep.

“Crowley, hello… it’s Aziraphale. Forgive me for what I said yesterday, I… I’m so sorry… Please, call me back.” The angel’s voice sounded mournful and guilty. He felt like a complete bastard.

Several more customers asked about Crowley throughout the day, as if to mock him, and afterwards would solemnly give him relationship advice. The angel felt so miserable that he wanted to cry. It was unbearable to think that he pushed away and hurt the only person he was close to, even if he couldn’t remember him himself.

_“__I_ _should_ _have_ _guessed__! __I should have been more careful! What a fool I am…,” _Aziraphale thought miserably, sitting on his couch in the evening with a glass of wine.

Suddenly the doorbell rang, making Aziraphale jump.

In the doorway stood a gangly figure in dark glasses.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The angel has a small breakthrough and Crowley learns something new about the "real" Aziraphale.

**Chapter** ** 3**

“Crowley!” 

“Did something happen? I got your message…,” the demon asked anxiously, long strides bringing him closer to the angel. “Did you remember something?”

Aziraphale shook his head, taking an involuntary half-step back, words of apology stuck in his throat. He was both glad to see Crowley and none too pleased about it. The space around him has become suffused with the already familiar smells of sulfur and smoke, the air twisted in a spiral, and his back stiffened in anticipation of danger that rolled off the demon in waves.

The latter paused his approach, apparently realizing that there was nothing for him to get excited about. The angel still didn’t recognize him and appeared to even be afraid.

“Why did you ask me to call you back then?” the demon scowled, crossing his arms across his chest. The glasses made his face look flat somehow, frozen, and the angel was overcome by a sudden urge to take them off to see the real emotions behind them.

“I…,” Aziraphale opened his mouth and then closed it immediately, as he felt his cheeks burn in a blush of embarrassment and his gaze slide on its own accord toward the thin lips that… _“Dear God, is it possible that they really are dating?”_

“I mean… I wanted to apologize for yesterday. It was extremely impolite on my part to say that we cannot be friends. Yes, we do seem to be virtually from different planets, and I don’t remember you, and you were quite rude yesterday, but I should have… or, rather, I shouldn’t have…,” the angel became completely flustered and murmured dazedly, “…I shouldn’t have…”

“Ah, do shut up,” the demon interrupted his rambling speech and sank exhaustedly into the armchair. “Oh, angel…” He pressed his palms against his face and mumbled something unintelligible. Then he pulled his feet up onto the seat and leaned his head back, exposing the suntanned neck.

Silence descended onto the bookshop, viscous enough that time itself became stuck in it. 

“Could you… at least take off your shoes?” the angel asked reservedly, trying not to stare at the protruding Adam’s apple.

“What do you care, _angel_?” the demon mumbled, but he did put his feet down. “You can’t even imagine how deep of a shit we’re in,” he blurted out moodily, staring up at the ceiling. “You know, I’m a bit high-strung lately… I thought… I thought we deserved a break or something like that, but now… I probably overreacted, too. Lashed out at you, and you could barely even remember my name, so… How about we try this again, hmm? I’ll try to be a little less crazy, and you… you just try not to banish me to hell. Deal?”

“Yeah… okay.”

The demon nodded at something in his own mind and closed his eyes. 

Aziraphale was looking at Crowley through new eyes. The demon no longer appeared dangerous to him, but, rather, endlessly tired and even burned out somehow, as if his batteries had run out. His aura still frightened him, but not as much as before. It was as if the angel has finally realized that its aggression was more of a façade than anything else – a mask, much like his glasses. And how could he possibly be afraid of someone, who came running the moment he heard his message. And the amount of worry he felt in the demon’s voice when the latter walked it…

The angel suddenly felt the need to do something for Crowley to make him feel that the angel regrets his earlier rudeness, to make him realize that he values his help. If they are seeing each other, why does Crowley keep mum about that? Did they, perhaps, have a falling out? Or even a break-up? Or is it possible that the demon simply doesn’t wish to shock the angel who lost his memory?

He suddenly remembered the black feather in his closet. _“I wonder if demons have wings…”_

“What?” Crowley perked up.

The angel didn’t realize that asked the question out loud.

“Wings? What do _you _think?” the demon smirked, but it came out crooked. Quietly, he offered, “You wanna see?”

“May I?”

“It’s for therapy, right? Hmm… I suppose it’s okay then!” The demon gave him a sly little smile. 

It was the first time Aziraphale ever saw him smiling – a toothy, boyish, if a bit tired, grin, and Aziraphale wanted to cradle it in his palms, to hide it away for a rainy day so he can marvel at it now and then, while no one else is watching. The angel didn’t even realize that he started smiling himself. _Maybe it’s some kind of demonic influence? _It’s not for nothing that demons of temptation exist, after all…

Crowley, in the meantime, rose from his seat, stretched with a full-mouth yawn, and clapped his hands enthusiastically.

“Ready?” he asked. 

The angel nodded. 

The demon closed his eyes briefly, and in the next instant there was a springy pop and two enormous ink-black wings unfurled behind him, nearly touching the ceiling. Aziraphale couldn’t contain a sigh of admiration.

“You like them?” Crowley chuckled.

“Oh yes! They are magnificent!”

“You have them, too. Only they are white, angelic. You’ll like them even better, believe me.”

“But I like yours… Can I…,” the angel faltered, “can I touch them?” 

“Just be careful,” the demon allowed smugly, turning around, his wings nearly knocking the books off the top shelves.

Reverently, the angel ran his fingers through the feathers. They were soft to the touch, and Aziraphale had never seen anything more beautiful in his whole life. _Did all demons have wings like that?_

“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in my life,” the angel whispered, emotional, all his earlier fears forgotten. “So it’s your feather then, right?”

“What feather?” the demon asked after a short pause, turning once more to face Aziraphale.

“Well, the one that’s lying in the pantry on the…”

The demon raised a questioning eyebrow, and the angel realized that he said something wrong. Perhaps it was rude to keep someone else’s feathers? Or forbidden even? And he just revealed his own secret without even knowing it? 

“You’ve kept my feather?” Crowley seemed puzzled and even a bit flustered.

“No, not me. The other me, the one who remembered everything, I mean… If you need it, I’ll give it back to you,” the angel mumbled, feeling awkward and itching to get away from the other’s scrutiny.

Crowley fell silent, but even though he had his glasses on, the angel was sure he could feel the other’s stare. 

“No, better leave it where it is,” the demon murmured pensively. “I think I’ll wait until the _real _Aziraphale comes back and then I’ll ask him what it means.”

The angel felt an unpleasant sting in his heart. That word _“real” _was said in such a profound tone… It’s as if they were talking about someone else, a third person who wasn’t here now. Someone that Crowley respected and, perhaps, loved. Someone he knew for many years. And when that someone comes back, the demon will forget all about the awkward, half-baked Aziraphale…

“What if he doesn’t come back?” the angel asked, hiding his feelings behind a mask of feigned indifference.

The demon shrugged. “He will have to.” And then added gravely, “Or I’m gonna have to go to Alpha Centauri without him.”

“Alpha Centauri, is that…?” 

“Long story,” Crowley replied, dismissive.

The angel nodded, composed, biting down on a flash of hurt. He understood suddenly why Crowley was in no hurry to admit that they were seeing each other. It was all very simple, really… It was because he was waiting for that _other_ Aziraphale. The one who knew about Alpha Centauri. The one who saw these gorgeous jet-black wings on more than one occasion. 

Aziraphale let his head drop, trying to fight the odd mix of jealousy and dismay. He barely knew this demon, and this is the second time already that he managed to turn his world upside down. His insides twisted suddenly into a tight ball, his head spinning as though he were looking down from the top of a skyscraper.

“Hey, you alright?” the demon’s worried voice sounded suddenly right beside him, supporting the wavering Aziraphale by the shoulders, wrapping his wings around him. Crowley’s arms felt warm and strong, and they held him as though they’ve done it a thousand times before – gentle and sure.

“Yes, I’m… All’s well,” the angel whispered, trying to force out the prickly thoughts.

The demon looked dubious, refusing to relinquish his hold on him, his thin lips pressed together in a tight line.

The _real _Aziraphale probably wouldn’t have been acting like a blithering idiot right now. He would have pulled his demon for a… Oh, dear, even for a kiss! He would have wrapped his arms around his shoulders or even… his hips. The _real _Aziraphale would have known not to talk about the feather that’s hidden in the jewelry box.

The angel felt like crying from the wave of hurt that rolled through him. And the foolishness of it only served to make the pain deeper. 

The demon pulled and tugged at him, asking him if he was alright. And the angel could only guess where the demon’s gaze was aimed at: his eyes, his lips or his neck…. They were a couple, for goodness’ sake! And those damned glasses made it impossible to see anything!

In the next instant there was a pop nearby, and the glasses suddenly disappeared from Crowley’s face, laying bare the worried gaze of his amber eyes. The demon froze as he processed what happened; then squinted incredulously at the angel huddled in his arms.

“You did this…,” Crowley grumbled, but there was a pleased note in his voice. Then the demon’s gaze shifted to his own arms that were still supporting Aziraphale, and he stepped back sharply, yanking his hands away.

The angel did the same thing, recoiling in the opposite direction and nearly crashing into a bookshelf. His chest still felt tight, but his curiosity got the better of him, and he asked, “The glasses disappeared… Is that because of me?”

“Oh, yes!” the demon smirked, folding his wings behind him and making them disappear. “I hope you didn’t destroy them, but merely relocated them some place? They were quite valuable to me, you know.”

“Do forgive me, I have no idea how this happened… But if it makes you feel better, I saw a spare in my desk.”

“Really?” Crowley perked up. “Well, what are you waiting for? Bring them over here! Oh, and look for something strong to drink in your pantry, while you’re at it. We must celebrate your first success on the way to becoming an angel… Although, to hell with it. Let’s go the Ritz! Oh, you’ll love that place, angel! If I could forget it just so I could become reacquainted anew with their cuisine, I would have done so for sure. So you may consider yourself lucky. Come on, hurry up and let’s go!”

The angel couldn’t resist him if he tried. It turned out that the demon’s voice had a sort of bewitching effect on him, like enchanting music. It was strange that he hadn’t noticed it before.

His mind in a fog, he found the glasses and gave them to the demon. The latter, to Aziraphale’s regret, immediately proceeded to hide his eyes behind them, the eyes that the angel no longer saw as either terrifying or hideous.

His chest still felt consumed by some constricting fire, as though a star lit up inside it and threatened to explode at any given moment. The angel didn’t want to think about his own strange feelings; he was afraid of what he might discover if he did so…. The only thing that was clear was that it was all the red-haired demon’s fault. And for the moment he had absolutely no idea what to do with that knowledge.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bit of Crowley angst and a potential lead

Crowley hated libraries, but it is there that he spent all night and half the following day after he had his argument with the angel and discovered the black mark on his chest. He dug through satanic archives, trying to find at least something about the mess that he and Aziraphale found themselves in. But either the libraries weren’t ancient enough or there weren’t any precedents to this yet, for the only thing he managed to find was a short muddled article from an anonymous author.

The latter intellectualized on the subject of light and dark energy, suggesting that mixing them is a highly dangerous thing to do (which Crowley already guessed himself), and that an overly close ethereal contact can lead to the essences becoming infected… with each other.

Close contact? Yes, that probably applied to him and the angel. They did, after all, exchange corporations that were, for better or worse, imbued with the energy of their hosts. And if some small particle of angelic grace got stuck inside of Crowley after the exchange, it was no wonder that he was basically rotting from the inside. It would have been easier to put him into a tub of holy water. The effect would have been the same, but the demon’s torment would have been cut much quicker.

Demonic energy was no less dangerous for angels… And it could have easily blocked memory, confused emotions or appear on the body in the form of a rotten brand, as was the case with Crowley. It was scary to imagine a similar ugly mark spreading across the angel’s fair skin, the black tentacles inching closer to his neck, to the fear-blown eyes...

The terrifying images that his imagination painted for him made Crowley nauseous, pulled impossibly at his chest and stomach – that unpleasant sensation one would feel in an elevator that was rapidly picking up speed… Or if one were an angel, cast out by God, and falling from Heaven.

_“How’s Aziraphale doing?” _the demon wondered anxiously, trying to concentrate on the article, _“Is he alright?”_

The author wrote that, if the infection already took place, the only thing that can stop it is the miracle of a repeat _true _union or the death of one of the beings… So, then, in order to neutralize the effect, they had to exchange bodies one more time? Or not? What did_ “__true_ _union__”_ even mean?

_The_ _damn_ _riddles__… _

_“The death of one of the beings?”_ Did that mean that if Crowley dropped dead, the angel would be cured and would recover his lost memories? 

Not that the demon planned on giving up that easily…

“You picked the wrong demon to mess with,” he grumbled, ripping the page out of the book and shoving it in his pocket. No, Crowley wasn’t yet done fighting for his life. He liked living, after all, and he wasn’t planning on giving it up that easily.

*****************

Following his library run, Crowley came home and, before he even had a chance to kick off his boots, he heard the message on his answering machine, left by a near stuttering voice:

_“__Crowley__, __hello__… __It__’__s_ _Aziraphale__. __Forgive me for what I said yesterday, I… I’m so sorry… Call me back, please…”_

What the hell was he supposed to think after a message like that? Demons were not known for positive thinking, so the only thoughts that swirled around in his head were of the most unpleasant caliber.

He made it to the bookshop at neck breaking speed and rushed inside, where he was greeted with a relatively healthy-looking angel, who still didn’t remember a damn thing and looked at the demon as though the latter was a spawn of hell… Admittedly, he wasn’t wrong on that last part.

As soon as he saw Aziraphale, his heart felt at ease, but the worry was swiftly replaced by a wave of melancholy. It rolled over him with such crushing force that even standing upright became a challenge.

He felt like a foreigner, an outsider – and not just in the angel’s shop, but everywhere else, too. The demon used to belong to the angel, was tied to him with thousands of threads of memories and mutual support. But someone snipped those threads with a pair of scissors and Crowley was left hanging in the dark. Just another demon – like all the others.

Crowley collapsed into a chair. It was a good thing, at least, that the angel was not trying to banish him, and they even managed to arrive at a tenuous compromise regarding their future relationship…. The demon promised to be softer, and the angel agreed not to discorporate him. Although the saintly being still forbade him from putting his feet up on the chair, as he’d always done in the past. It was a good sign.

Meanwhile, Crowley was trying to spot in Aziraphale the traces of that same disease that was eating away at his chest. But the angel, even after the memory loss, was still very much a creature of habits when it came to his clothes, and was thus walled up with buttons all the way to his neck. It would have been fun to change his wardrobe before his awakening and convince him that this was actually his style. Crowley wondered idly if the angel would have tried on a spiked leather jacket before he caught on to the willful deceit.

Aziraphale watched him warily, never leaving his corner of the room. It pained Crowley to see the fear that settled deep within the blue eyes, as if the angel truly believed that he could hurt him.

Despite himself, he imagined what the angel’s reaction would be if he were to announce that Aziraphale had to get naked and let the demon examine his body for traces of some unknown black junk. Best case scenario, the angel would have thrown something heavy at him, worst case – he would have blessed him and then – hello, Hell, burning cauldrons and torments… 

But in the next half hour the demon forgot all about his fears, because the angel suddenly asked to look at the black wings and was caressing them gently with his warm fingers.

… and then he let slip the bit about the feather that he, for some reason, kept in a jewelry box, and the demon stayed silent, because he, too, had an entire collection of white feathers.

… and then the angel nearly passed out, and the demon was holding him by the shoulders like he had never done before… Before they barely even held hands a few times.

… and then they decided to go to the Ritz, because the demon missed the bright smile, the warm wrinkles by the blue eyes. He wanted to surprise his angel, while he still had the chance. For none of them knew what would happen tomorrow.


	5. Chapter 5

The dinner at the Ritz was absolutely exquisite, but watching the shifting emotions on the angel’s face was even better. Wariness would return occasionally, roll over the angel’s face like a fleeting shadow and would melt away in a rush of pleasure that Aziraphale displayed as he munched on the latest helping of oysters. 

At times, thinking that Crowley didn’t notice, the angel would observe him distrustfully from under the fuzzy eyelashes, as though he couldn’t quite understand how he managed to land himself in such company. That look on the angel’s face echoed in a twinge of mournful pain somewhere below Crowley’s heart.

But then wine came into play and the atmosphere improved. The demon kept sneakily snapping his fingers under the table to make sure the angel’s glass never got empty, while telling him all kinds of tall tales and amusing himself over the fact that the angel believed everything he told him. True stories, on the other hand, would occasionally crash and burn: 

“I just don’t understand why I would endanger myself for the sake of crepes?” the angel mumbled around a mouthful of those very crepes.

“You’re telling me that we spent a bunch of years raising the wrong Antichrist and none of us realized that it was a normal child? I refuse to believe that! It had to have been some devious plan on my part to throw you off track!”

“Oh, so unicorns don’t exist? Too bad we didn’t get that runaway foal back… Incidentally, why didn’t we get him back?”

For the first time in a long time Crowley was having a truly good time. His head felt too light for dark thoughts to linger there, and his belly felt pleasantly full from all the food and drink. His sickness would occasionally make its presence known via a sharp pain in his chest, but it wasn’t enough to bring Crowley back to reality. He wanted to linger a bit longer in this cozy little world of the Ritz next to the smiling Aziraphale, a plate of crepes and a half-empty bottle of wine.

Everything comes to an end sooner or later, however. And so this evening, too, came to an end. Aziraphale was barely able to put words together, let alone stand firmly on his feet. Crowley’s plan was working without a hitch. Luckily, the angel hasn’t mastered his powers yet and didn’t know how to sober up with a snap of his fingers.

The demon all but dragged the angel to the car in his arms and then, having reached the bookshop at record speed, hauled the now completely uncoordinated body to the bedroom.

The angel let his drowsy gaze roam over his surroundings and stared up at the ceiling with a silly, senseless smile, while Crowley busied himself with pulling off his shoes and outer garments.

“Crow…ley?” the angel called sleepily, alarmed when the demon disappeared briefly into the kitchen to pour himself some water. Using his powers was dangerous: apparently their use accelerated the growth of the mark, which already at times made it hard to breathe. 

“Shhhh, sssleep, angel,” Crowley murmured quietly, soothingly stroking the white curls. His fingers burned as if they were being stabbed by thousands of tiny needles. The angel obediently dozed off.

Sleeping Aziraphale was warm, peaceful and so defenseless that Crowley wanted to protect him from the world, from any danger. But there was no one to protect him from Crowley.

He needed to act quickly and with cool-headedness of a doctor. Crowley took off his glasses and turned off the light… Simply because he felt calmer without it. Dark deeds are better conducted in the darkness; it’s no coincidence that most crimes take place at night. Moreover, Crowley could see perfectly in the dark. 

The demon began unbuttoning the angel’s old-fashioned shirt, but quickly realized that his trembling fingers couldn’t handle the buttonholes. Too much excitement for one weak-hearted demon. Plus, the angel shifted in distress and turned onto his stomach, cutting off access to the buttons.

_“__Fine__…. __I guess we’ll have to do this the magical way, after all. It__’__s_ _just_ _a_ _medical_ _examination__, __nothing_ _more__. __A simple precaution. The angel would have done the same thing if he were in my place,” _the demon told himself and snapped his fingers, making all of the angel’s clothes disappear. 

Exhaled convulsively.

He saw millions of naked bodies, but it had done nothing to prepare him for tonight. The angel was beautiful …

Darkness wrapped itself around Crowley, laying bare his nerves; alcohol still brewed in his blood, and burning pain constricted his chest – his sickness was reacting to the surge of magic. Aziraphale slept on his stomach, his arms splayed out and his cheek pressed against the pillow. His lips were red from the wine, and his pearl-white skin was nearly glowing in the darkness.

Crowley bit the inside of his lip, examining Aziraphale’s perfectly clean back: the sweet shoulder blades, rounded shoulders, soft sides. The demon’s heart was pounding out a Lambada, and his groin became painfully engorged.

Carefully, making sure to touch him only with his fingers, the demon turned the angel over onto his back in order to look at his neck. Leaned forward, putting one knee onto the mattress. Aziraphale slept on – pliant, soft, mesmerizing with his vulnerable openness. His skin was clean, without any hint of black spots, but Crowley still felt the presence of something foreign, something that didn’t belong to this being of light. All he had left to do now was look at the ethereal plane….

If the angel hadn’t forgotten how to use his powers, he would have had an impenetrable defense for this type of intrusion… Looking at the angel’s ethereal plane was akin to looking into his soul, but Crowley was too worried to think about such trivial matters as the white-winged being’s consent.

Slowly, trying not to disturb Aziraphale’s sleep, he placed his hand on the angel’s solar plexus, closed his eyes, and called on his magic, wincing instantly from the surge of pain in his chest. His world became inundated with angelic grace. Warm, tangy, full of love and tranquility. A long time ago, Crowley used to be filled with it, too, but then it was replaced by emptiness and the feeling of irretrievable loss. Crowley felt like a deflated balloon, filled with viscous _nothingness. _Like an apple with its core cut out and the two mangled halves put back together again. 

Right now the demon was peering intently at the angel’s grace, trying not to look too closely at the emotions that whirled around him.

And, suddenly, he spotted a dark cluster – like an inkblot on a white sheet of paper. _There_ it was – the source of all the problems: the blending of their energies. 

Perhaps he’ll be able to extract that gunk?

The mark burned, suffocating him. His ribs felt as though they were being boiled alive. But the demon continued to pour in more of his power and began to reach mentally toward the cluster. The cluster pulsated red and black, absorbing light like a tiny black hole. But the moment Crowley touched it, the ethereal plane snapped shut, and the demon was thrown out into the real world, where he still stood over Aziraphale’s naked, sleeping form, panting and gritting his teeth. 

_“Fuck!” _Crowley swore in his mind, trying to catch his breath. The good news was that he now knew the source of the problem. But he had no idea what to do about it. Direct approach, as it turned out, was ineffective. 

Maybe they should try switching bodies again? But the angel would have to trust him completely in order to do that, and he would also have to learn how to use his powers… And Crowley had no idea how much time they had left. Nor could he be sure that the switch would help. What if the mark jumped from Crowley to Aziraphale after such experiments? 

The pain retreated gradually, coiling snakelike in his chest. Crowley was shivering – and not just from the use of magic. Aziraphale’s energy always had an intoxicating effect on him, bringing up to the surface the desires that lay buried at the bottom of his black soul. Over the period of six thousand years he had accumulated enough for all of Hell and half the Heavens, too. And now, when it became clear that the angel was ill, too… And that there was a chance that he will never remember Crowley and will most likely ask him to stop bothering him with his presence…

He so desperately wanted to leave at least a few memories for himself that would keep him company during the particularly dreary days. Or before his death… Which Crowley was secretly ready for. If there was no other way, if this was the price for saving the world, it was better for the demon to pay it than the angel.

There were no windows in the bedroom, and darkness reigned within. The demon’s yellow eyes burned in that darkness like two searchlights. Crowley’s hungry gaze slid across the pale skin.

Desire beat against his temples, moved in a wave of heat toward his palms, spread lava-like in his belly and groin. _“Touch him… This is your only chance, you won’t get another. The_ _angel_ _will_ _never_ _know__. __He’s fast asleep. He’s got more alcohol in him than a barrel of wine,” _hissed a greedy voice inside of him. 

In the end, Crowley was only a demon.

_“I’ll just touch him… just a touch…,” _he promised himself, unable to resist. 

He placed his hands onto the slightly cool skin, barely touching it. Traced a path from the hairless chest and the tiny bumps of nipples to the angel’s soft belly. Crowley felt a rush better than from any alcohol. He was almost suffocating from the tangy, hot, wistful feeling that overwhelmed him from his heels to the tips of his wings. If only he could lean down, press his cheek against the pale skin, kiss the hollow under his collarbone, taste every freckle along the way. If only the angel allowed it, the demon would have shown him just how much he treasured him…

Crowley gritted his teeth and pulled back, panting like a hunted down beast. Miserable creatures like himself are never satisfied with what they have; always keep reaching their dirty paws toward the forbidden. Destroy the fragile beauty for the sake of momentary whims.

He should be happy that the angel still associated with him after all these years. Probably out of habit… Or because there were no other immortal beings nearby who loved theatre, red wine and who were ready to listen for hours on end about books or anything else, really, as long as it made one certain angel happy.

Having finally come to his senses, the demon tried to move away, when, suddenly, there was a rustle on the bedsheet below him, and in the next moment another’s hand captured the demon’s wrist, keeping him in place. Aziraphale was staring up at him from the bed. His eyes were wide open and burning with white-blue fire.


	6. Chapter 6

Icy fear gripped him.

Aziraphale – naked and open – was squeezing the demon’s hands and looking up at him with his impossibly blue eyes.

_“__This_ _is_ _it__. __I’m dead!” _a wounded thought raced through Crowley’s mind. He felt as though all the air has been sucked out of the bedroom, and out of his lungs, too. He was desperately trying to come up with some way to justify himself, when the angel suddenly pulled him in with unexpected strength, forcing Crowley to all but fall on top of him. And then his brain shut down altogether, because the lips he longed for more than anything in this world were suddenly pressed against his mouth.

The angel was kissing him slowly, exploring him, tasting him, pushing his hot tongue between the demon’s bewilderedly trembling lips. The angel’s arms wrapped themselves around him just like Crowley always dreamed they would.

The angel smelled of alcohol and vanilla cream, of ozone and freshly cut grass. He was both soft and firm, and his hands slid along Crowley’s back, holding him closer, tighter. The demon was feeling too much, and his heart raced, hot and greedy, soaking in the new sensations.

Crowley was shaking with tension, but even through it all he could hear something breaking inside him with a pitiful crack, crumbling into thousands of tiny shards, crunching under foot, the sharp edges biting into the skin. It was their friendship, dying. Because once the angel remembered everything… he would never forgive him. Never…

The demon tried to pull away, but the arms held him too tight. The angel was clearly using his power.

“S-s-stop!” Crowley hissed, yanking himself out of the whirlpool of passion virtually by the scruff of his neck. The angel’s greedy drunken lips have already moved down to his neck, his palms were groping blindly along his back, slipping under the black shirt. The proof of another’s desire pushed tellingly against his thigh. “You’re t-t-too drunk, angel…” 

Aziraphale didn’t hear him; continued to squeeze him with so much force as though he wanted to break all of his ribs. Crowley was forced to miracle a bit of added strength for himself and only then was he able to break out of the steel embrace, rolling away to the edge of the bed.

The angel blinked, confused, looking down at his hands as though trying to understand where Crowley disappeared to. Then raised his unreadable gaze to the demon.

Aziraphale’s eyes still burned with blue fire, his cheeks and neck flushed red, the pale chest heaving as though after a run. The air was seeped in arousal, passion and unbearable thirst.

Crowley wanted to howl at the unfairness of it all. His entire demonic nature demanded that he stopped being an idiot; demanded that he grabbed the angel, tasted him, possessed him!

No. That wasn’t what he wanted… Not like this.

The angel made a move toward him, and the demon recoiled as if scalded, flying off the bed in an awkward, hurried tumble. He jumped up, slamming on his sunglasses on the go, and disappeared out the door so quickly as though a hellhound was on his tail.

The Bentley roared away from the little shop in Soho, tossing up clouds of snow. Speeding through the night streets of London, Crowley frantically went over everything that had just transpired in his head.

He’d written off the angel’s strange reaction to intoxication, amnesia and his own intrusion into the ethereal plane. Ether was very sensitive to emotions and could have mistaken Crowley’s wishes for its own.

And the demon also knew for certain now that this was the end – absolute and irreversible, and that realization made him want to howl like a wounded animal. How would he be able to look the angel in the eyes? Once his memory came back… and Aziraphale realized that he was blatantly lied to for the past century at least. The demon called them friends while indulging in dirty fantasies, and the moment he got the opportunity, he used the angel’s vulnerability, his trust, his intoxication. Aziraphale would never want to see him after that. Or he might simply send him straight to Hell for one final rendez-vous with Beelzebub. And it was debatable which of the two would be worse.

The demon could see it clear as day – the way the angel’s eyes darken with disappointment, the way his bright, serene features twist with fury and disgust. That vision pierced him with a deadly chill, worse than that awful mark on his chest… which, incidentally, was also giving him quite a bit of trouble. Crowley was starting to honestly doubt whether he’d be able to make it home before losing consciousness.

He stumbled into his apartment, barely able to keep himself upright, and, the moment he closed the door behind him, he tripped, collapsed right by the entrance, and huddled in on himself, hugging his knees. He was shivering from a chill that originated somewhere underneath his ribs and spread in icy chunks through his veins. The mark burned like fire but didn’t warm him – seared him with cold instead, tearing him apart from the inside out. This must be what it felt like for people unlucky enough to fall through the ice into freezing water. 

Crowley lay on the floor, thinking about the future and the past, about the way he ran off, about betrayal and about Aziraphale who trusted him even after losing his memory. He thought about the demonic black-hole-like cluster that was lodged in the angel’s soul.

And the intoxicated coral-red lips, blue eyes and pearl-white skin continued to dance before his eyes. 

***

The demon dreamed of the Fall; only this time, for some reason, he was the executioner, pushing the angels down from Heaven. Aziraphale was standing before him and looking at him with contempt. He wasn’t trying to defend himself when Crowley pushed him in the back – he simply fell in silence, burning and losing his feathers…

Crowley woke up, bathed in sweat, a scream dying on his lips. It took him a few seconds to understand where he was. Then memories crashed over him, making his head so heavy that he could barely lift it up off the floor where the demon so imprudently fell asleep yesterday. His body was aching; his shirt was dusty and rumpled, stuck to his back; his teeth were chattering with cold. He felt as though some creatures from Hell had chewed him up and spat him back out.

Afternoon sun filtered through the drawn curtains. Crowley could have easily slept for a couple days, but, from the looks of it, no more than ten hours have passed. 

The demon stood up with difficulty, furiously tore off his clothes, toed off his shoes and staggered barefoot to the bathroom where one of the walls was taken up by a large mirror.

“Bloody hell,” he murmured, looking at his reflection. The black stain swelled up and was now marring his stomach as well as his chest. The tentacles spread out toward his back, legs, shoulders, wrists, and even neck. Any attempt to touch the mark resulted in a wave of searing pain – like stabbing a nail into a fresh wound. And he was also viciously cold: the temperature of his skin in the areas touched by the sickness resembled that of frozen meat, and the veins surrounding them have taken on an ashen-blue tinge as though someone poured crude oil through them. 

Crowley felt no fear. He was examining himself with a good dose of indifference and a bit of surprise. The organ responsible for emotions shut down on him yesterday, and life without Aziraphale didn’t seem all that valuable. And this would be the life waiting for him should he be lucky enough to survive.

Crowley filled the bathtub with hot water, climbed inside and went under, taking advantage of the fact that he didn’t actually need to breathe. He wanted to turn into a snake, but he wasn’t sure how the sickness would react to that and he still wanted to see the angel at least one more time, even if from far away. To make sure that he wasn’t depressed over what happened yesterday. Perhaps he would even deign to exchange a few words with the demon?

The healthy areas of his skin turned read from the heat of the water, but the chill didn’t let up. He would have had to literally turn himself inside out to chase it away completely because it felt like a piece of ice was stuck inside of him. And Crowley, like any snake, hated the cold.

The hot bath did help a bit: some energy flowed back into his limbs, and the melancholy eased up a bit.

_“What are you having a meltdown over, you, spineless worm !” _Crowley chided himself, pulling on his skinny jeans. _“Drunk or not, the angel made a move himself – latched on so hard, he would have sucked out my soul if I had any! So what if I looked into his ethereal plane for a bit? Maybe I even disturbed the emotions there a bit, but he doesn’t know about that… Some saint he is! I step away for a moment to get some water, and he’s already naked and jumping me! Who__’__s_ _the_ _real_ _victim_ _here__, __huh__?”_

That theory was falling apart at the seams, starting at the very least from the fact that Aziraphale was in no shape to even pull off his own socks. But every demon knew that offense was the best defense. If the angel still had control of his powers, he would have instantly recognized the intrusion to his ethereal plane. Moreover, angels don’t suffer from memory loss or hangovers (which the current Aziraphale, naturally, had no idea about). Perhaps, when his memories did come back, the angel wouldn’t think too hard about what happened and why? And after a while the trails would have gone cold…

Crowley knew that he was grasping at straws, but insolence was second nature to him. Who else would have the gall to strike up a conversation with an angel at the Garden of Eden, and then go so far as to offer him the Arrangement? And it went down okay, it all worked out! Maybe it’ll work out this time, too?..

The demon pulled on a pair of gloves, raised the collar higher to hide the blackened veins, and smiled at his reflection. It looked wonderful – caustic and crooked. The angel will never notice! 

Crowley should really work on the angel’s powers. Maybe if Aziraphale managed to release his wings, it would get things moving? Or maybe if he managed to master his powers, this damned cluster would dissolve on it own? It didn’t seem to be poorly affected by magic, so it might work… As a last resort they could always try and repeat the body switch.

Crowley gave himself a pat on the back for his ingenuity, put on his glasses and rushed out the door.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More misunderstandings, hurt feelings and bad decisions. This time on the angel's part.

The kiss was a mistake… After Crowley ran off, Aziraphale was unable to go back to sleep. All traces of intoxication wore off as if by magic, and so the angel spent the rest of the night walking in circles around the bookshop, trying not to burn with shame and to make at least some sense of his own feelings.

And there were oh so many feelings. They contradicted each other, and all of them concerned Crowley in one way or another. The angel couldn’t remember if it was this way before, but now he felt as though his entire life revolved around that red-haired demon with snake eyes and a bristling smile. When he agreed to go to the Ritz, the angel was hoping to clear up their relationship a bit, but he ended up simply enjoying the wonderful food and the interesting company. And even the rare flashes of worry couldn’t dampen the overall impression.

Crowley was a wonderful storyteller, and it seemed like he enjoyed spending time with the angel. He had an infectious laugh, made cute hissing noises, dragging out letter “s”, and his golden eyes flashed every once in a while from behind his glasses. The angel didn’t even notice how he relaxed, succumbing to the demonic charm. The cocoon of prickly chaos that surrounded the demon seemed to him, suddenly, so very near and dear; the demon’s toothy grin appeared to be exceptionally marvelous, and the chairs at the Ritz – divinely comfortable. Or, to put it simply, the angel got drunk.

He remembered the way home as a series of flashes. Here was Crowley supporting him at his back, and his hands felt surprisingly warm. Here, Crowley was helping him into the car, gently moving Aziraphale’s snow-wet hair away from his face. Here, the angel was virtually hanging off the demon’s angular shoulders, and the latter slid his hands under the angel’s knees, picking him up with surprising ease, and carried him into the bookshop, having opened the door with a snap of his fingers; then ran up the stairs to the bedroom and lowered him onto the bed sheets. 

The angel remembered that his mouth felt so dry that he could barely move his tongue. He was terribly thirsty, the fact of which he complained out loud… And in the next moment Crowley disappeared together with his tart, intoxicating aura and his infectious smile. Aziraphale was left alone.

The room was spinning on the alcoholic merry-go-round, and the angel suddenly felt an overpowering sense of nausea at the sudden thought that Crowley was merely a figment of his imagination. That the demon was never here, that this stuffy small bedroom had always been empty.

It suddenly became clear that the world without Crowley was some other preposterous, unwanted place, and that there wasn’t anything more terrifying than ending up there. Later, when Aziraphale remembered that thought, he cringed at the pomposity of it, but at the moment it seemed to him to be the real truth. Fear rushed poison-like into his blood, forcing his heart to beat at a crazy rhythm. But then he heard footsteps on the stairs, and the demon was beside him once again, holding a glass of water in his thin fingers. Then the angel reached out his hand, wanting to touch the suntanned cheek, but his palm met cold glass instead.

The angel didn’t remember falling asleep, but he dreamt of Crowley alone. Of his eyes, his hands, his smell, his touches… It seemed as though it was all somewhere nearby, but every time he looked, the picture slipped away from him. No matter how many times the angel tried to reach out, the demon continued to elude him.

And then something happened… Perhaps it was the alcohol playing an evil joke on him? But his heart suddenly skipped a beat and his entire being started at the explosion of strange, contradictory emotions: suffocating hatred, longing… mangled, trampled desire… and love. An entire ocean of love — so pure and bright that one could be blinded by it.

Those feelings speared the angel through the heart, making his soul tremble with fear and happiness at once. And when he opened his eyes and saw Crowley’s yellow eyes above him, nothing felt more natural to him than pulling the demon toward him to kiss him, to touch him, to hold him as close as he was physically capable of doing.

Still, even though the angel was able to capture the demon, keeping hold of him turned out to be more than he could handle. Crowley twisted out of his grasp, broke away, scrambling to the edge of the bed. His eyes were feverish, and his face – a pale mask, and only his lips remained red from the recent kiss.

The angel himself got scared and reached for Crowley to explain, but the latter recoiled as though death itself was reaching for him. He flew out of the bedroom without looking back, and a few moments later the angel heard the sound of the car peeling out of its parking spot.

All traces of intoxication vanished as if by magic, but the taste of the kiss still lingered on his lips, and his memory supplied him with images of distraught and frightened demon with a wounded look in his eyes. _“Dear God, what has gotten into me!” _the angel scolded himself, pulling at his hair. He felt so ashamed that he wanted to melt into the ground, to disappear somewhere where neither the demon nor God would be able to find him.

Belatedly, the angel realized that he was wearing no clothes at all, and he wrapped himself in a blanket with a strangled moan. His head swelled up with questions and lack of answers to those. When did he manage to get undressed? Did he make his clothes disappear like he did with the demon’s glasses the other day? Why the devil did he jump at Crowley and started kissing him? Why was the demon even hanging around in his bedroom when the light was already off? And why did he run away with his tail between his legs? Where did all these strange emotions come from… hatred, longing? Love… But the angel didn’t feel any love, only confusion. Perhaps… desire? Or maybe… Cursed alcohol! Why did the demon have to get him drunk? And the bastard himself stayed stone cold sober!

Shame was burning into his heart. He was painfully disgusted by his own drunken impulse, and the memory of the demon’s reaction to it made him feel like bursting into tears of humiliation. They were a couple, after all, before Aziraphale lost his memory! Or perhaps they weren’t? But wasn’t the visit to the Ritz a date? Would a mere friend carry him in his arms, or lovingly fix his hair, or rush to him at the first call and worry about his well-being? Or was it all a ruse? But what for? For the sake of temptation? Well here he was, just now, ready and willing… Some angel he was! Oh, fudge…

Hurt roused up inside him, raised its head and hissed, mimicking the demon, _“Perhaps it’s because Crowley doesn’t need a defective angel? Or_ _perhaps_ _he__’__s_ _waiting_ _for_ _the_ _real_ _Az__-__z__-__ziraphale__?”_

That thought made something slimy stir in his stomach, and his eyes stung as though the angel was about to cry.

_“Well, two can play that game, right?” _the angel thought, bitter. He stood up from the bed and pulled on clothes that he found in the closet.

“He’s waiting for his Aziraphale. But _I _am not waiting for anyone. And I don’t remember any demons, and I can do without his help. Especially, since I’m not at all sure what that yellow-eyed snake has in mind for me. It would only be better for me if he stays away.”

Deep down the angel knew that these were all excuses. That he was simply afraid of looking the demon in the eyes, afraid of what he might see there. His wounded pride demanded revenge, and hurt whispered in his ear that if the demon needed someone else who looked like Aziraphale but was different on the inside, then let him wait for that other one’s return until the Second Coming! And the angel was just fine with the way things are right now.

Aziraphale, too, knew that offense was the best defense. After all, if the demon were not nearby, those strange, foreign emotions would go away, too. Everything would be forgotten, would dry out, fall away like dead leaves. And then in the spring new life would take its place, a life that would have no place for Crowley, for his eyes and his charming voice, and that crippling, wistful jealousy he provokes in the angel.

After all, what could be more ridiculous than the angel being jealous… of himself?


	8. Chapter 8

The sun was barely up when Aziraphale opened his shop, ready to greet customers. He was in a most dismal mood, and that was probably the reason why passers-by were in no hurry to stop in, but, quite on the contrary, made sure to give the bookshop a wide berth. Aziraphale was reading a book, occasionally looking out into the window and trying to convince himself that he wasn’t jumping at the sight of every black car whose silhouette resembled the Bentley.

Several times the angel picked up the receiver, about to call Crowley and leave him a voice message to the effect of: “Don’t ever show your face here again!”, but he never did get up the nerve to do it. After all, nothing would betray the fact that the angel was insulted more than words of that nature. _“It would be better to behave as if I didn’t care,” _he convinced himself. And yet his breath still caught when the Bentley parked across the shop and a gangly figure in a black coat and blood-red shirt jumped out onto the sidewalk.

Crowley noticed the angel in the window and froze mid-step. It was hard to tell what he was thinking because of the stupid glasses. As for the angel himself, he was quite displeased to experience a spell of tachycardia and no less than flu-like fever.

The demon waved to him, a crooked grin twisting his lips. There was a pink box under his arm, tied with a ribbon. Crowley ran across the street, flung open the door to the bookshop, stomped twice on the rug, knocking the snow off the soles of his shoes, and asked, nonchalant,

“Hey there, White Feathers, how are the books sales coming along? Hitting your target? Here, this is for you,” he placed the box on the table closest to the door. “Donuts, your favorite! O, well, they will be once you try them.”

Aziraphale rose, crossing his arms on his chest and ignoring his racing heart. Memories of last night came to him, unbidden, tainted by bitterness and shame that made him want to grit his teeth or, better yet, have the ground swallow him whole. Crowley seemed oblivious to the existing tension and apparently decided to pretend like he wasn’t the one who scampered away from Aziraphale last night like from bubonic plague.

The demon plopped into his favorite chair without waiting for an invitation and immediately stretched out his legs with obvious delight. Looking everywhere _but _at Aziraphale, he asked with deliberate insouciance, “How’s the hangover?”

“Not so bad if you take into account the amount of alcohol I consumed,” the angel gritted out, glaring darkly at Crowley. Something changed in the demon from yesterday… The demon’s aura became thinner almost, and the smell of sulfur, on the other hand, grew stronger. The color of the demon’s skin resembled white clay mixed with ash, his lips had a blue tinge to them, and even his glasses couldn’t hide the dark circles under his eyes. His hands were hidden underneath the gloves, and the collar of his shirt was buttoned all the way to the top, even though before now the demon maintained a free style.

The angel took a few steps toward him in order to take a better look, and the smirking mask momentarily slipped from the demon’s face, giving way to a flash of fear that instantly hid itself in the corners of the mockingly twisted lips. 

“What happened to you?” the angel asked, trying not to let the suddenly awakened worry seep into his voice. “You look like someone who rose from the dead… If the dead could rise, of course…”

“I just didn’t sleep well,” the demon mumbled.

Aziraphale pressed his lips tighter together. _“He wouldn’t have fed such a feeble lie to the _real _angel,” _he thought darkly. _“Or is that a hint of some kind about the not sleeping well? The kiss was so disgusting that Crowley was plagued by nightmares and now wrapped himself in clothes up to his neck in case I tried to throw myself at him again? Even hid his hands to avoid touching me by accident… Then why the hell did he come here in the first place?” _

“I’m here on business, actually…,” said Crowley, going back to his nonchalant tone. “You need to learn to use your powers. I think it might help.”

_“He wants to get his former Aziraphale back as soon as possible,” _the angel realized, and the unpleasant feeling coiled in his stomach into a slippery clump.

“Not now and not today. I’m busy,” he replied sharply.

“With what?” Crowley lifted his glasses for a moment, taken aback.

“I’m selling books, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“Ah, I see…” The demon smiled, but it was the kind of smile that said _“don’t give me that bullshit”_. 

The angel turned his back on him, picked up the closes book, turned it over in his hands. Crowley kept silent, possibly waiting for Aziraphale to grow tired of playing this charade. _“Why in the world am I acting like an idiot here,” _the angel thought, furious, slamming the book on the table harder than necessary and instantly, feeling guilty about it, gently patted the rough cover.

“You know what, you’re right,” Aziraphale responded dully, turning to face Crowley. “The bookshop has nothing to do with this. I am simply satisfied with the way things are.”

“I don’t understand,” the demon frowned, his smirk stretching tight like a bowstring.

“I mean that I feel great even without my memory. It’s like I chopped off all the unessential and began life with a clean slate.”

“Chopped off-f-f-f… the uness-s-s-sential?” the demon hissed, rising from his chair.

“Precisely.”

“Have you gone mad?! And the uness-s-s-sential in this-s-s cas-s-se is, what, me?!”

“I guess it is.” His hands were shaking traitorously, so the angel crossed them again, hiding the palms under his arms.

“But our friendship…”

“Is now only your friendship. Yours and that _other _angel’s, whom I don’t know at all. Your relationship with him has nothing to do with me, so, if you would be so kind, please, leave this place…” Aziraphale wanted to add _“and never come back”_, but his tongue seemed to stick to the roof of his mouth.

Crowley stood, clutching the back of the chair, pale and with the look of someone who had just crashed into a cement wall. For a long minute he didn’t say anything, as if unable to believe what he heard.

“Do I need to repeat myself?” the angel’s voice shook.

“What an utter bas-s-s-tard you are,” Crowley spat out. The glasses hid his eyes, but the angel could have sworn that they were flashing with fury. “To hell with this!” he roared. “You know, I don’t need this any more than you do!”

The demon strode quickly toward the door. Then froze, standing on the threshold.

The angel stared at his tense back, digging his fingernails into the skin of his palms to keep himself from running after Crowley. Something strange was happening to his body and soul – it felt like something was tearing them apart. _“I’m doing the right thing,” _he kept telling himself, but his legs felt rubbery and something pulled achingly at his heart. _“Go on, leave!” _he shouted in his mind and instantly heard his own pitiful murmur of a response at the very edge of his consciousness – _“stay-stay-_stay_…”_

“Do you really…,” Crowley spoke suddenly in a dangerously low voice, the kind that made Aziraphale’s hair stand on end, “do you really not want to even see your wings, my angel?”

The answering silence was so thick, one could cut it with a knife. 

Crowley turned back toward the angel, his face was sharp, predatory. The angel opened his mouth to say something, but all thoughts seemed to have fled his mind all at once.

“S-s-silence gives cons-s-sent, did you know that?” Crowley’s voice shook. 

And then the angel felt… it… - the brush of the demon’s magic against his shoulder blades, like a wave of hot air pushing against his back. And in the next instant there was a rubbery clap in his ears, a gust of wind against the back of his head, and Aziraphale’s own snow-white wings unfurled around him.

The added weight strained his shoulders so unexpectedly that he had to grab on to the table. Pens fell to the floor. The wings were so enormous that they easily knocked a few precious volumes off the top shelves. _“Oh, dear God, I really am an angel,” _the realization rang in his mind while Aziraphale jerkily pulled down the curtains on the windows. And when he turned back toward the door, the demon was already gone… 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So now Aziraphale knows for sure. What is he gonna do next? And what will Crowley do now that the angel rejected him?  
Please let me know what you, guys, think in the comments.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Music blared all around him, some couple was laughing nearby, glasses were clanging against the counter where the barman would place them in front of one customer or another. The demon, who was sitting at the table in the darkest corner of that establishment, was aware of none of those sounds.

If someone were to shake Crowley by the shoulder at this moment, the latter probably wouldn’t have even noticed, as deep in thought as he was. A fact that was also likely facilitated by the amount of alcohol he had drunk. Empty bottles lined the table.

Time after time, the demon dragged up the events of the day in his memory, like running himself through the proverbial meat grinder. A bitter smile twisted his lips when he remembered that tiny ray of hope that pushed him to show up at Aziraphale’s. How could he even think that he’d be accepted after a betrayal like that? After he used the angel’s defenseless state and intruded upon his soul. And it really doesn’t matter if Aziraphale got his memory back or not. There would only be one outcome. It was already a miracle that they stayed together as long as they did… A demon and an angel should not be hanging around each other; they should not be smiling at each other and drinking wine together; shouldn’t touch each other, shouldn’t feel… Demons should not desire someone so pure and beautiful like _that_.

Now it all fell into place – as if they never met each other, never knew each other, never broke the will of Heaven and Hell. Now everything was _right_. So why did it feel so bitter, so resoundingly hollow? And why did his insides feel like a piece of termite-eaten wood, like the vacuum of space, like a dying stray, kicked out into the cold by her owners? Why did he want to hunch over, break down and sob, and, once he ran out of tears, to cry out his blood until the very last drop? Why, if this was how it was meant to be, did Crowley feel that the hollow feeling in his own chest was about to pull him in and turn him inside out? Why…

Today his hope was snuffed out like a candle under a douter; darkness settled inside him, the kind that exists in the lowest circle of Hell. One could say that Crowley now carried Hell within him. Wasn’t that nice? Even Heaven couldn’t come up with a better punishment; even holy water would not have been as awful as the effect that the angel’s words had on Crowley.

All he had left to do now was to get drunk in a bar, like in a badly clichéd movie. The demon knew no other remedies for loneliness.

Crowley tossed back another shot of whiskey, rubbed his chilled forearms. Neither the gloves nor alcohol could keep him safe from the cold, and he shivered mercilessly. It was no longer just his chest that burned with the icy fire; the cold has now spread to his back, shoulders, neck, and even his feet. But the worst ache was right under his heart, right where his soul would be. If demons even had a soul, of course…

Crowley remembered Aziraphale’s soft face. His warm hands and lips, his pale angelic skin, his smile… And his ice-cold eyes filled with disdain, his detached voice, his crossed arms, his sharp, firm, “It’s only your friendship… It’s like I chopped off the unessential.”

It hurt. Emotionally. Physically. The angel was prepared to simply kick Crowley out of his life. And, yes, maybe he didn’t remember him, but the demon thought that Aziraphale should have felt something, some connection between them. The angel should have at least tried to talk, to find out the reasons for the nighttime… incident…

_“__No__, __he_ _shouldn__’__t_ _have__. __He doesn’t owe you anything. He’s an angel, and you’re a creeping, crawling wretch,” _Crowley rebuffed himself.

The angel had the right to be like this; the demon deserved his hatred. But he so badly wanted to go back, to find different words, to try again and again, even if it hurt him again…

No, Aziraphale doesn’t need that. He made it clear that he wanted Crowley to leave him alone, and the demon, instead of complying with his (now former) friend’s wishes… yanked the angel’s wings into the mortal plane.

What on earth possessed him to do it! He had so little magic left already to be wasting it on such petty tricks. But he wanted so badly to wipe that haughty unfeeling expression off the angel’s face, to show him that he was making a mistake in giving up his powers… and Crowley. And, maybe, for the tiniest of seconds, the demon actually hoped that it would help Aziraphale remember…. Even if it still wouldn’t fix their relationship, but…

That miracle he hoped for was not to be – the demon realized that from the angel’s terrified face, from his awkward movements, from the books swept off the shelves. The miracle was not to be, because She didn’t leave any divine miracles for Crowley to perform; he lost the right to perform them just as he had once lost his white wings. 

The demon already decided that a little bit later, when the city would be asleep, he’d return to the bookshop. He wouldn’t go inside, just reach out through the walls with his remaining magic, and, if it turned out that Aziraphale still hasn’t figured out how to put his wings away, he’d help him hide them. Afterwards, Crowley would leave, would disappear somewhere to the other side of the world… Perhaps he would try to ask Adam for help later? …If the mark allowed him to have that “later”, of course. And even if not, the demon would be unlikely to feel particularly regretful over that pitiful lonely _later_ that might not happen.

Crowley poured some more whiskey for himself, tried to bring the shot glass up to his mouth. But his hands were shaking so badly that he spilled half of it, splashing it all over his shirt, pants and tabletop. He was about to snap his fingers by force of habit, but stopped himself in time. There was now a strict limit to the use of his powers.

“Hey, handsome! Need help?” someone cooed from above him, and the demon didn’t realize right away that they were talking to him. When he raised his gaze, he saw a young girl in a leather miniskirt and a top that barely covered her breasts. The young girl smelled of sour tequila and cigarettes; she was smiling at him, holding out a stack of napkins. “Huh, why do you wear sunglasses inside? Although, you know what, never mind, don’t answer that. It’s more mysterious that way. You know… Oh, let me,” she winked drunkenly at him, then suddenly leaned over, propping her elbow on the table, and slowly began to blot the whiskey, first on Crowley’s shirt, then on his belt…

Perhaps in another time and another place another Crowley would have latched on to the opportunity to amuse himself, but now the demon wanted to be left alone. So he caught the pushy party girl quite roughly by the hand, roughly pulled her toward him so the girl would be at his face level, and hissed with all the venom he was capable of, “Did you know that s-s-smoking can lead to canc-c-cer, Alic-c-ce? And s-s-sex to pregnanc-c-cy? If I were you, I’d get tes-s-s-ted for both the former and the…”

“What are you doing?”

The voice that came above him was one that Crowley would have recognized among thousands of others. Startled, he released his hold, and the terrified Alice, having lost her footing, fell over him, her breasts pressed in a quite revealing manner against the demon. But immediately she squeaked out something, jumped back as if stung, and ran off somewhere into the back of the room. She didn’t have cancer. Although the same could not be said for the pregnancy. Still, at the very least, she definitely wouldn’t feel like smoking for a while.

Aziraphale was, indeed, standing beside him, sullen and dressed in a huge cream-colored raincoat that bulged oddly on his back, as though the angel had two humps growing on his shoulders… or, well, two wings. It looked quite amusing, but Crowley decided that he would laugh at it some other time.

He was forced to admit that the angel remained unattainably beautiful even in that ridiculous raincoat. The disco lights illuminated the blond curls, reflected in the blue eyes, making them light up with furious fire. The demon’s heart thumped hard against his ribs, clenched painfully, and thumped again, as if trying to get out and roll somewhere far-far away. The earlier hurt awakened as well, despite the poor timing. 

Crowley turned away from the angel, poured himself more whiskey and asked dully, “How did you find me?”

The angel rustled his wings. The demon felt how uncomfortable Aziraphale was standing there and attracting everyone’s attention, so Crowley closed his eyes and reached out despite the pain toward the snow-white wings with his leftover magic. _“Goodbye,” _he whispered in his mind before making them disappear.

Aziraphale sighed in relief. Crowley lowered his gaze to the table, waiting for the wave of pain to pass. Every breath twisted into his lungs like a sharp corkscrew, so he had to remind himself that only humans needed oxygen and that demons could easily do without it.

Cold sealed him off completely, and Crowley didn’t want Aziraphale to notice anything, didn’t want him to feel guilty for any of it. Seeing pity in the angel’s eyes would be the worst thing imaginable.

It was too late now to change anything, to say anything, too late to try to hold on. The sickness came too far; there likely wasn’t a clean patch of skin even on his fingertips. His demonic powers had grown so weak that they would barely be enough for some small-time miracle, and even if the angel were to suddenly agree to a body switch, Crowley simply wouldn’t be able to scrape up enough power for it.

Crowley had a fleeting thought that he should, perhaps, wrap it up with the drinking and try to get home. To lie down and rest, to warm up… Perhaps he’d think of something in the morning…

“I think it was a miracle.”

“Wot?” Crowley jerked up his head, wondering fleetingly why the angel was still here. Not only that, he was actually sitting in a chair across from him and pouring himself a shot of whiskey.

“You asked me how I was able to find you,” the angel explained with unexpected gentleness, his too-too attentive gaze focused on the demon’s face. “I sensed where you were. I wanted to, very much, and it worked, just like back then with the glasses…”

“Mmmm, I see…,” the demon mumbled. He thought the angel would ask him why he did that trick with the wings, but Aziraphale asked him something completely different.

“So what were you doing… with that young girl?”

“What girl?.. Oh… Nothing special.”

“She looked frightened.”

“Naturally. I’m a foul fiend, after all, it’s my job to frighten.”

“What did you say to her?”

“...”

“I saw her throw her cigarettes into the trash…”

“Listen, angel, what the hell do you want?” Crowley snapped. “You wanna do small talk? Then go find yourself a more angelic company and leave me alone!”

Aziraphale didn’t move, only his face grew dark once again like a thunder cloud, and the blue eyes continued to peer at Crowley’s face, as if looking for something and not finding it.

“Your neck and… your jaws... they look strange. The veins – they’re… black,” Aziraphale began, then faltered and fell silent, because Crowley cringed with such repulsion as though someone stuck a dead rat under his nose.

“Did you forget that I’m a demon? And you know… we’re all like that: with veins and black spots, with slime on our ears and… fins and tails. One acquaintance of mine carries a lizard on his forehead. Demonic nature and all that. Just think of it as me returning to my true form. Getting ready for a long excursion into Hell. I think they’ve been waiting for me down there long enough.”

“But I thought…”

“Jus-s-s-t leave me alone, okay?” the demon hissed. He buried his head in his hands, fixed his gaze on the table, trying to clamp down on sickly shivers. _“I’m dying, angel!” _he wanted to scream to Aziraphale, but he just clenched his teeth harder instead. _ “Please stay with me a little longer,” _he wanted to ask him, but he kept silent, waiting until the angel grew tired of beating his head against the wall.

Crowley hated feeling weak, let alone showing that weakness, and he couldn’t help the angry sarcasm that was spilling out of him. Wasn’t it the angel himself that kicked him out not so long ago? And rightly so. Maybe later… someday… they’d meet again, talk over a glass of wine (though Crowley doubted it very much), but now Aziraphale needed to leave. Crowley didn’t want to pass out right in front of him, and he was in so much pain that he felt like it could happen at any moment If only he could use magic to lower his sensitivity to pain…

“Are you acting like this because I’m not _him_?” Aziraphale asked suddenly with such strange, uncharacteristic bitterness that the demon looked up at him.

“Wot?”

It was the angel’s turn to look down at the table.

“I know… I know about your relationship with the other Aziraphale, and I understand that I’m not him. I don’t have his memory, his emotions, I don’t understand the jokes you had with him, I don’t know your favorite places and restaurants, and even his “favorite donuts” I tried today for the first time. You probably think that continuing to be with me instead of him is a betrayal of sorts, but I wanted you to understand my feelings as well….” The angel was speaking hurriedly, without pausing, as if afraid that if he were to pause even to take a breath, he wouldn’t be able to keep going. His cheeks were flushed with embarrassment, and his fingers were clenched around a napkin.

Crowley became more and more confused with each new sentence, feeling as though he got locked inside a labyrinth of senseless words. His eyebrows raised high, he listened carefully to those ramblings, looked at the angel’s flushed cheeks, and couldn’t figure out what was going on.

“If you are so repulsed by touching me,” the angel whispered faintly, “why do you continue to act _like this_? All these dates, the donuts, the conversations over wine. And then you lie when I ask you what’s happening to you. You run away the moment I go a bit beyond just... looks. What reaction do you expect from me? You call us friends, but… all you think about is how to bring the other Aziraphale back! And if it doesn’t work out, then what? You gonna turn me into his poor replacement? Or…”

“Hold up, wait!” Crowley raised his palms, and Aziraphale stopped mid-sentence – by that point he was red as a beet, and only his eyes continued to give off a belligerent shine. “So you think… that we…,” the demon choked, trying to come up with the right words. He couldn’t quite wrap his head around what he heard. “You think that… what do you call him? The _other Aziraphale_? You think that he and I were dating? Till death do us part and all that?”

“I know it,” the angel whispered.

“No, you… you’re serious? Where did you even get that idea?”

For the first time that day the demon was amused. So goddamn amused that he felt like crumbling to dust right at the feet of the mortals so they would walk all over him, mingling him with dust; to stick to the soles of their boots and to never exist anymore. It would have been funny. Much, much funnier than listening to this hellish nonsense out of the mouth of the angel of God. Hysterical laughter was bubbling up in his chest. 

“Alright, angel, it doesn’t matter where you got that from… But you are badly mistaken. We were hardly even friends.”

Aziraphale smiled bitterly, leaning back against the chair. Forced out with uncharacteristic venom, “Here you go again… You just don’t like seeing _me _in _his _place. Admit it, and we’ll go our separate ways.”

“You’re out of your mind…”

“No, you’re out of your mind, Crowley!” Aziraphale snapped, turning livid with anger. “You think that I lost my brains along with my memory? You think I don’t remember how you shuddered when… when…”

The demon didn’t bother listening to any more of this nonsense. He simply raised himself up a bit, leaned over the table, pulled the angel toward him by his shirtfront, and latched onto his mouth with a fierce, savage kiss. 

It was as if a chasm has opened up inside him, and the demon stepped inside it without looking. Every part of his demonic soul howled with yearning, and the beating of his own heart resembled a drum roll during execution. The angel’s lips were scaldingly hot, but they most likely seemed that way because Crowley’s own body temperature was closer to an icicle.

The angel froze, tense, like a deer in the headlights. Started in alarm when Crowley’s tongue slipped into his partially opened mouth. 

The demon felt as if his entire life was contained within that bitter kiss, and he would have gladly given it all to Aziraphale, together with breathing, memory and feelings, if only the angel asked. If only he accepted.

That kiss fractured some invisible axis inside him that allowed the demon to still somehow control himself. The angel wasn’t responding, but he wasn’t trying to pull away either, holding still as if he were listening to something.

The chill in the mark grew stronger all of a sudden and surged toward his throat in a painful wave…

Crowley bit the angel roughly on the lip, dug his fingers into the sloping shoulders, leaving marks, forcing Aziraphale to come to his senses, to push Crowley away.

Bottles fell from the table, the angel knocked the glass off with his elbow. The entire bar was probably watching them by now, but Crowley couldn’t care less. Crowley began to laugh in a hoarse, cracked voice, shaking violently. He felt as though he was about to laugh out his own lungs, but he found it impossible to stop. For God’s sake, why did even laughing hurt so much…

His jaws locked together from the icy cold; he could barely bend his fingers; and only his lips felt good, felt hot almost. But even they were cooling down, losing the bits of precious warmth. 

Aziraphale was sitting across from him, staring at the clearly insane demon with fear in his eyes. Through tears of laughter Crowley noticed a stain of blood that appeared on the angel’s elbow, right on the beige fabric – the angel must have cut himself on the broken glass…

A waiter already appeared beside them, so the beet-red angel was forced to tell him that everything was alright and that would pay for the damages. Crowley, meanwhile, threw money on the table and fixed his falling glasses, all while continuing to laugh. The laughter morphed into rough, cracked cough.

“Why did you do it?” Aziraphale asked in a halting whisper when they were left alone and the demon could no longer muster the strength to laugh.

Crowley’s throat was burning. The emotions on the angel’s face were changing like the bits of glass inside a kaleidoscope, as if he wasn’t quite sure whether he should be angry, surprised or happy yet. His lips were swollen and looked particularly inviting. 

“Do what? Gave the money?”

“You know what I mean!”

“Oh, you’re talking about the kiss-s-s-s? You liked it? Could have as-s-s-ked me earlier, rather than going around in c-c-circles,” Crowley uttered hoarsely, pulling on one of his ugliest smirks. The idea came to him in an instant, but the words kept getting stuck, and he was forced to push them out of his throat.

“Oh, angel, my stupid little s-s-seraph,” Crowley grinned, “like I said, I will need to be going back to Hell soon. They kinda forgave me there; plus I’m really tired of London, too cold here… I have no plans to return here, so there’s no point in hiding the truth any longer.”

The demon leaned back against his chair, sprawling as obscenely as he could. His mouth felt dry from the as yet unspoken words. It was an epiphany of sorts. Crowley realized with a sudden, perfect clarity that he would never see the angel again. That even if Crowley survived, he would stay away. Because, as it turned out, his strange sickness reacted to Aziraphale; was drawn toward him the same was Crowley was drawn to him.

During the kiss the demon felt the cold within him flicker upon contact with the angel; felt it rise from his chest to his throat and then reach toward his lips as though trying to pass through them onto Aziraphale’s lips… This could not end well. They couldn’t see each other anymore. Crowley was not prepared to risk the angel’s life no matter what the situation was.

But if the angel was able to find the demon now, he would be able to find him again… So he needed to make sure that the angel wouldn’t want to look. After all, it was much easier to break something than to build it. Especially, when you’re a demon.

Crowley smirked and rasped out, “You’re right, angel. I lied to you, but not about our relationship. Funny how it worked out that you believed in our closeness-s-s-s.” He licked his lips obscenely, hoping that it would have an effect on the angel. But the angel’s expression didn’t change; he seemed to be listening to something deep inside him. “An angel and a demon together. Heaven would have had a laugh about that one! Although I doubt they have the sense of humor for that kind of thing… Too bad I didn’t know of your ideas-s-s-s about us-s-s-s earlier, or I would have seized the chance. When else could I have had the opportunity to tempt one of God’s angels, huh?” He wiggled his eyebrows for good measure. “The memory loss, though? That’s my idea. Went through a hell of a lot of trouble, but it all worked out, as you can s-s-see.”

The demon fell silent and reached for the only remaining bottle on the table. Took a sip straight from the bottleneck. For some strange reason the alcohol had no effect on him today. He was waiting for some kind of reaction from the angel – indignation or questions – but the angel stayed silent and continued to look at him with such intent that the demon’s haughty mask threatened to crack along with his feigned acrimony. His gaze slid involuntarily back to the Aziraphale’s blood-soaked sleeve – the angel didn’t appear to be aware of anything.

Crowley hurried to continue.

“Don’t you even want to know what my genius-s-s-s plan was-s-s?” His voice kept slipping into a hiss. “Well, to hell with you, I’ll tell you anyway. It’s s-s-simple, really. While you can’t use your powers-s-s-s, you can’t protect your angelic s-s-s-oul. Last night I entertained mys-s-self by getting my claws-s-s-s into it, but I acc-s-s-s-sidentally contaminated it with my emotions. Lus-s-s-st, if you must know. S-s-s-so when you woke up, you got a little carried away… But that way you s-s-saved yourself from the Fall. Congratulations-s-s, my holier-than-though angel. And now that we got everything cleared up, I gotta call it a night. S-s-sinners can’t wait and all that. I promis-s-s-se not to bother you again, s-s-so you can sleep easy. Or don’t s-s-sleep… You are aware that you don’t need to s-s-sleep, right?” 

Crowley stood up, trying not to look at Aziraphale’s darkened face, and swaggered toward the exit, skirting around customers. He paused before crossing the threshold, squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and snapped his fingers with effort, releasing the last bits of magic in Aziraphale’s direction. And the moment the doors closed behind him, he folded over in a painful spasm.

Crowley should have been proud of how he handled himself, but instead he felt terrifyingly sick, and he wanted to go back, to explain everything… Together they could come up with a solution, could they not?

_“Oh, you are such a coward,” _Crowley snapped harshly at himself, forcing his legs to move. _“You know perfectly well that it will be better if he never finds out. Not now, not after… It’ll be better if he doesn’t try to look for you. You know how he is, you know he’s liable to think that this is somehow his fault… The important thing now is to leave as quickly as possible….”_

Nighttime London had sunk deep in snow, and Crowley weaved his way through it, blinded and deafened by pain, wishing only to get as far away as possible from that ill-fated bar, from Aziraphale, from his own madness. He didn’t risk taking the car, but he tried to move in the direction of his home. Somehow he thought that if he could only get there, the pain and the cold would back down, and the hot bath would warm him up, and he would be able to live on – even like this, with a gaping hole in his chest and without a drop of magic. After all, you could always come up with something, to find a way out, as long as you were alive.

That was what Crowley was thinking up until the moment when his legs folded and he collapsed in the middle of some alleyway.

_“It’s a good spot to rest a bit. As good as any other,” _Crowley told himself, trying to hide the feeling of viscous, suffocating fear even from himself. He suddenly thought he saw the tall figure of Death out of the corner of his eye.

His insides twisted with another painful spasm. Fear intertwined with cold, piercing his body, freezing his thoughts, pressing him down to the ground. To his horror, the demon felt the sickness spread to his wings in the blink of an eye, and now seemed to be gnawing into them with all the fury of a hellhound, breaking the delicate bones. 

An inhuman cry rose in Crowley’s burning chest, but he no longer had enough air to push it out. Locked within his body, the scream rang in his ears, knocked against his temples, blurred his blinded eyes. 

There was barely a glimmer of demonic energy left, and the sickness surrounded it closely, squeezed its stone fist around the last flickering spark. Pressed down, breaking it, not letting it twitch, plunging his consciousness into a troubled icy coma.

The darkness within him spilled into the outside world, swallowing it whole.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I know, these two dumbasses really need to learn how to talk to each other. But don't yell at me, I'm just a translator here :)


	10. Chapter 10

The angel remained sitting for a while after the demon left the bar, motionless, his mind blank. Because it was impossible to think when one’s very own apocalypse was wreaking havoc inside you. 

In his mind’s eye he could see the demon’s face, tortured, covered in black veins, with ashen-grey lips like those of a dead man. The cracked laughter that resembled a coughing fit continued to ring in his ears like a hellish echo.

The angel was torn between two conflicting wishes. On the one hand he wanted to run after Crowley, to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he admitted what was wrong, because the angel could not shake the feeling that the demon’s entire speech was nothing more than a cry for help…

On the other hand… What if Aziraphale was wrong? What if Crowley’s words were the real, uncomfortable, ugly… truth? What if they were enemies? What if this kind of appearance was just part of Crowley’s demonic nature, and the angel would only amuse the demon with his worry?

The angel was straining his memory, hoping that the forgotten past would open up to him, would prompt him what to do. But the past did nothing more than smirk derisively, its dead eyes staring back at him from the darkness of oblivion, and sniggered occasionally in a broken, scratchy laughter. If only it would open up to him, if only it had pity on him…

The angel clutched the edge of the table, trying to quell the insistent desire to rush out of the bar, and the tabletop gave unexpectedly under his fingers, crushed as though it were made of cardboard. Tension was growing within him, ready to burst at any moment. He remembered the kiss, the cold lips, the desperate fingers grasping the angel’s shoulders. Then the memory jumped to the young girl to whom the demon whispered something in the ear, and his own feeling of grief, an urge to take Crowley in his arms and not let anyone even look at him, because… because…

_“__It__’__s_ _not_ _right__. __He explained everything to you. You are from opposite sides, completely different creatures. Be_ _reasonable__. __You were never together, you don’t have _that _kind of a relationship that you made up in your head. You already established yourself as a horny fool! He finally left you alone, and your wings are no longer hovering behind your back. Be_ _happy__!” _

He didn’t feel happy, even though he continued to try and convince himself, pushing his doubts deeper into a faraway compartment. The compartment was cracking at the seams and refused to close. Worry refused to let him go. 

Aziraphale felt like a man who lay tied up on the railroad tracks and was unaware of it. Although, how could one be unaware when the ground was shaking and there was an awful roaring sound in your ears and a giant metal behemoth of inevitability was about to flatten you into a pancake?

People in the bar went about their business as usual; the neon sign above the row of bottles was glowing, the table glistened with the puddles of spilled alcohol. Aziraphale’s gaze caught on his own torn sleeve. The beige fabric was dark red with blood. Shards from a broken glass were lying on the edge of the table and on the floor.

The angel rolled up his sleeve, dazedly, as if in slow motion, expecting to see a laceration there. But there was perfectly healthy skin underneath. And that was impossible… unless…

Aziraphale sat and stared at his arm for several seconds, and then he shot out of his seat and ran out the door.

A rush of cold hit his face. The first thing that jumped out at him was the lone black Bentley parked across the street, but the demon himself was nowhere to be seen. Somehow the angel knew that this wasn’t _right. _That it _shouldn__’__t_ be this way. His heart jumped into his throat, then sank into his boots. A shockwave of worry crashed over the angel, so strong that he felt as though someone hooked him up to an electric chair.

The door slammed behind him, a drunken group spilling out into the street. The angel didn’t notice anyone or anything. He was trembling with worry, with vague, as yet subconscious fear. The angel felt his invisible wings flutter behind his back.

His lips whispered Crowley’s name on their own volition. The urgent need to see the red-haired demon, to see him at once twisted his veins. And yet the angel was the one who had kicked the demon out not so long ago, the one who decided to cut all ties… So why now the very thought of the demon made his throat tighten in fear?

The angel’s feet carried him through night-shrouded alleyways.

_“I’ll just check to make sure he’s okay. I just need to check, that’s all,” _the angel kept repeating to himself, moving hurriedly through the streets of London. His face was wet with snow.

How was he to know what the truth was? How was he to know whom he could trust? The demon? The bookshop customers? Or, perhaps, himself? Because, if he were to cast aside the reasons of his conscience, if he were to listen to his intuition instead, he could hear vividly the lament of his own heart. A realization, as clear as day, lit up suddenly within him – a realization that the demon was not planning to go back to any Hell. That all of his smirks – cracked and crooked – were nothing but a mask for his despair. That the kiss was too real, too bitter. 

“Crowley!” Aziraphale shouted into the darkness. The echo of his call bounced off the brick walls. His own voice sounded scared. The angel felt that the demon should be somewhere nearby, but for some reason he couldn’t find him. And he could feel the beginnings of true panic gripping his heart. “Crowley, please! Where are you?”

_“Oh, please, God, let everything be okay. Let my worry be baseless…,” _the angel prayed, darting around the dark streets like a lost creature. And he didn’t care anymore if the demon would laugh at him. Let him laugh, let him choke with laughter, just as long as Aziraphale found him. _“__He_ _just_ _doesn__’__t_ _want_ _to_ _see_ _you__. __He__’__s_ _hiding__. __He explained everything to you, don’t you get it?” _his conscience whispered, but that whisper was plaintive somehow, as if it didn’t quite believe its own words. Late passers-by hurried past.

“Crowley! Oh, damn you!”

His curls were soaked and stuck to his forehead. The angel spun in place, and then suddenly saw something under his feet that…

_“Oh, no…”_

Feathers. Even in the darkness their blackness stood out against the snow like stains of fuel oil. A little further by the brick wall he saw an entire cocoon of feathers, dusted over with snow. As if an enormous bird had wrapped itself in its wings to keep warm.

“Crowley,” the angel whispered. And then he was beside him in the next instant, pulling the wings away with trembling fingers to find a lifeless ashen face underneath, covered in frost and streaked with black veins. _“__Oh__, __God__…”_

Aziraphale felt like someone had ripped his heart right out of his chest. Guilt, shame and soul-wrenching fear flooded the angel so fast that he nearly choked on them. Hands trembling, he shook the demon. The ginger head lolled lifelessly from side to side, fell backward, exposing the vulnerable neck, marred by dark-blue veins. The angel drew Crowley toward him, wrapped his arms around him, kissed him tenderly, blindly, desperately somewhere on the cheekbone. The demon was cold, much colder than snow, but the angel felt a spark of life still flickering somewhere inside him. Or, perhaps, he simply wanted to believe that he did?

“— Good Heavens, Crowley, darling… What have you done. Why….” The words spilled forth unprompted, while the angel frantically tried to warm the demon up by rubbing him with his hands, breathing on him, holding him close. But the demon remained a lifeless frozen puppet in his arms, not giving him so much as a weak inhale in response.

Aziraphale lifted Crowley into his arms then. Gently pressed him close to his chest, where his heart pounded, dying of grief. Crowley’s heart, on the other hand, was playing one single note – soundless. His sunglasses slipped down on the bridge of his nose, exposing paper-thin eyelids. The black wings hung will-lessly off his back. Aziraphale lifted them up, his hand trembling with worry; folded them behind Crowley’s back with such care as if they were the most fragile of crystals. He wouldn’t allow, he would _never_ allow Crowley to die like this, alone in the cold, without explaining anything, without giving Aziraphale a chance to apologize. Why didn’t he ask for help? Why didn’t the angel himself realize that this stubborn demon needed help so desperately? It was all so obvious. Those veins, the black marks, that terrifying sickly laugher, the ridiculous lie about Hell, the pallor and the aura that was growing weaker every day. How could he have been so blind?!

The angel had no idea how to help, what to do next. But first he needed to warm the demon up, and as quickly as possible, too.

With that thought in mind, Aziraphale held Crowley closer, squeezed his eyes shut, and took a few steps deeper into the snow-covered alleyway. The world around him grew warmer all of a sudden, and the angel found himself in the middle of his own bookshop. This time his powers didn’t let him down. His magic swirled around him, reacting keenly to the angel’s emotions, gently touching the demon with its soft waves as if trying to wake him up, as if it worried about him just as much as Aziraphale himself was.

The angel lit up the fireplace with a snap of his fingers without even thinking about it. Hurried to the bathroom with Crowley in his arms. There, obeying the angel’s will, the light was already turned on and hot water had filled up the tub. Clouds of steam were rising to the ceiling.

Without waiting another moment, the angel stepped over the edge of the tub, lowering himself into the water together with the demon. The water was spilling onto the floor, the water burned. The heat of it would have made a normal person scream, but Aziraphale felt like screaming regardless. He was rocking the demon in his arms like a baby, trying to call on his powers to warm Crowley up at least a little. The water was rapidly cooling as though a chunk of ice was lowered into it, but the demon did not grow any warmer. He was motionless both on the inside and on the outside. The black wings were only halfway submerged into the tub, and water sluiced down from the feathers. His glasses were lost somewhere, perhaps they were left back in the alleyway.

The angel grasped the demon’s painfully thin wrists, pulled off the leather gloves. Sharp needles stabbed into Aziraphale’s heart when he saw black vines winding all around Crowley’s fingers. Guilt gnawed at his soul with renewed force as the angel placed kisses on the sharp knuckles. All that time that the angel felt sorry for himself, coming up with ways to better push Crowley away, Crowley was suffering… And still he continued to care about the angel. And now he was dying in his arms.

“Crowley, I’m begging you…,” Aziraphale whispered into the red hair. He felt like he was falling into an abyss, and that he was about to crash to his death, break into millions of pieces. He couldn’t understand how he didn’t see this before, how he didn’t feel how important this demon – whom he couldn’t even remember – how important he was for him. They were tied together with something greater than a simple friendship, greater than love. It was possible that people have not yet come up with the name for the kinds of feelings that had now swallowed the angel whole.

“LET HIM GO,” a dark figure rustled, appearing suddenly next to the bathtub. Somehow the angel knew right away who was standing before him.

“Get out of my house!” he ordered, and his voice thundered furiously under the ceiling.

The light bulb flickered, the water foamed. The dark figure took a step back. The angel felt his own eyes, face and hands fill with heat; felt the air around him quake. And then his wings unfolded threateningly behind his back, spilling the water everywhere and filling up the entire space of the small bathroom, walling it off from Death. Aziraphale was prepared to fight if needed.

“HE’S MINE,” Death rumbled.

“Out!” the angel shouted with such force that the world shuddered, the energy around him twisted into ropes. And even though Aziraphale didn’t know it, an entire street block lost power.

Death was flung aside with a wave of that energy, pushed beyond the wall of the house. The angel knew that it wouldn’t last, that Death would come back, come back very, very soon. One could not defeat Death; all one could do was delay it.

“Please, wake up,” Aziraphale whispered, kissing the demon’s smooth, cold forehead.

Crowley’s hair floated on the water like ginger snakes. His face was calm, still, lifeless. The demon seemed fragile, desperately tired, defeated.

_Dead_.

The angel felt tears on his cheeks. He no longer had the strength to hold them back. He didn’t know what else he could do and his heart was bleeding at his own helplessness. There was so much blind superhuman grief inside him that it would have been enough to drown half the world.

Following a desperate impulse, the angel leaned over Crowley, pressed his lips against his in an equally desperate kiss, trying to transfer at least a drop of the heat that raged within him. And suddenly he felt _something_...

Evil and prickly, it touched the angel’s lips through Crowley’s icy-cold ones. Aziraphale pressed in closer, trying to capture that strange sensation. The prickly something stirred and slowly began to crawl, to flow snakelike out of the demon, filling Aziraphale’s soul with cosmic cold…

Crowley arched in the angel’s arms, jolted, pulling away from the strange not-quite-kiss. Moaned, long and painful. His eyelids fluttered, rose slightly, revealing black-streaked yellow eyes. The sickness had reached even them, but it didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered for the angel, whose entire world had died within the span of a single evening. Died, and was now coming back to life once more. That world’s breath was Crowley’s breath, and that world’s heart was beating slowly and haltingly, in tune with the demon’s heart.

Crowley woke up.

His drowsy eyes roamed around the bathroom; he was shivering. His jaws shook, his teeth knocked against each other, and his eyes looked too open, too scared. The air hissed, as he pulled it into his lungs.

_“__Oh_ _Lord__. __Thank_ _you__, __thank_ _you__!… __I_ _won__’__t_ _ever_ _lose_ _him_ _again__. __I_ _won__’__t_ _ever_ _let_ _go_ _of_ _him__, __I_ _swear__!”_

The angel leaned forward once again toward the demon’s lips, intending to draw out the cold until the very last drop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thanksgiving to my American followers!


	11. Chapter 11

Crowley didn’t move at first, not realizing what was happening. But then he understood, felt it, and began to struggle to pull away, to turn his head to the side, not letting Aziraphale put his plan into action. Water sloshed onto the bathroom floor.

“What the… No! S-stop…,” the demon hissed weakly.

The angel ignored him. Gently but firmly he grasped Crowley’s face with warm hands, keeping him from pulling away, and pressed his lips against Crowley’s, siphoning out the cold bit by bit. Crowley had no strength left to resist, but he still tried: hit the angel with his hands, dug his fingernails into the soft hands, mumbled in protest. Aziraphale didn’t budge an inch. His horror mounting, the demon felt the cold retreating; watched the veins on the angel’s face swell and blacken, branching away from the corners of his lips in coal-black rivulets. His insides clenched in fear. Crowley struck out with everything he had, twisted, snakelike, shoved the angel away with his wings, finally managing to wriggle out of his embrace.

“En-nough!” he shouted in despair, his body shaking with tension, cold, fear, and incomprehension.

The angel stared at him with somber, red-rimmed eyes. He was crying?

“You were crying?” the demon asked stupidly, blinking, still not understanding where he was and how he ended up here. Why were they sitting in a bathtub, for Hell’s sake? How did the angel manage to let his wings out? Didn’t Crowley help him hide them? And why were his own wings out? Crowley’s head felt fuzzy. The wings ached as though someone had been battering them with sticks for hours on end. 

“_Crowley,_” the angel’s voice sounded the way someone who had undergone a couple of hours of torture with red-hot iron would sound. Not that Crowley had personal experience with that, but…. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

The demon froze, anxiously going over the recent events in his head. _He walked out of the bar… Then he lied down to rest in one of London’s alleyways._ Did he fall asleep and the angel found him? _“Didn’t fall asleep, no,” _he corrected himself. _“Died. Nearly died…” _And the angel rescued him. And was crying. Put him in the bathtub, probably trying to warm him up. And then kissed him for some reason. Siphoned out some of the cold, and was now looking at him with anger-darkened eyes. Probably wanted to understand what he was risking his life for.

“Didn’t tell you what?” the demon returned the question, lifting himself up a bit, trying to buy himself some time and come up with a more credible response. His clothes were completely soaked and was sticking unpleasantly to his skin. The angel was prohibitively close, and just as wet and disheveled. But somehow, in some inexplicable way, he also managed to look intimidating. Awfully intimidating – it seemed as though he was looking into Crowley’s very soul, or whatever it was that demons had in its place. And those black river-like veins around the angel’s darkened lips… Damn! Crowley tried to sit further away from him, to get up onto the ledge, but Aziraphale unexpectedly grabbed on to his hands. Repeated in a firm tone that brooked no argument, “Tell me what is happening to you? And how do I help you?”

Crowley lowered his head, trying to hide his confusion. The air tore at his throat as though someone had filled it with pieces of broken glass. His chest constricted with an already familiar band of pain. He wanted to tell the angel the truth, but he was too afraid that an attempt to fix everything would only end up making everything worse. That the angel would get hurt… As he had already gotten hurt. The sickness jumped into him, too, in the end. Because Crowley fucked everything up, as usual. Tried to protect the angel, and ended up only bringing him trouble. Unbidden, the memory came to him that the angel thought they were dating, and his ears colored instantly with an unwelcome flush, despite the cold. 

Having received no answer, Aziraphale gave one himself, “You said that my amnesia happened after the body switch. Does that mean that your sickness began at the same time?” He spoke in a slow measured tone, as though trying not to spill out the words. His hands were keeping a tight hold on Crowley’s wrists. “We need to try switching bodies again to stop it, right? Let’s try to do that right now.”

The demon shook his head. Rasped out, “We can’t.”

“Why not?”

Crowley looked up, his worried gaze travelling over the black veins that lined the angel’s face the same way as they had his own. The inkiest ones started at the angel’s lips, spreading out toward his cheeks, cheekbones and chin. The white wings unfurled to cover the entire width of the bathroom quivered whether from agitation or from fury. That was what happened when angels fraternized with demons…

“I have no powers-s left….” Crowley shrugged his bony shoulders, trying to hide his trembling. “They wouldn’t res-s-store as of late.”

Understanding showed on Aziraphale’s face, then morphed into chagrin. He rose to his full height, letting go of the demon’s hands. No longer supported, they fell will-less back into the cooled water.

Crowley realized that the angel was about to leave, and that realization made him feel painfully nauseated and stiflingly hot, as though someone had put a plastic bag over his head and his air was about to run out. Despair once again flooded in from all sides, whispering the cruel truth, _Aziraphale still didn’t remember him, they are strangers to one another…_

Yet instead of leaving, the angel suddenly bent down, making the demon start, grabbed Crowley under his arms, pulling him up toward him. Gently but firmly wrapped his arms around his back as though he had done this a million times before… as if there was nothing special in their embrace. And stepped over the edge of the tub together with Crowley.

“Oh, my dear, you’re cold all over,” the angel murmured into his temple, and his tone of voice, his breath, his warm hands drove all thought out of the demon’s head. That was why he was unable to object when Aziraphale also put his arm under his knees, effectively lifting him up off the floor.

Black and white feathers dragged along the floor, leaving wet traces behind them, while the angel walked toward the living room with Crowley in his arms. To be fair, the demon wasn’t sure that he could have made it there on his own, or that he could have kept his legs under him, for that matter, even if he’d tried his hardest. Drowsiness rolled over him in waves, and he struggled to keep his eyes open. Cold shivers were once again wrecking his body, so he had no energy left to wonder about Aziraphale’s strange behavior.

The angel snapped his fingers without letting go of Crowley and made the wet spots disappear. Crowley started. When did the angel learn how to use his powers? What if the sickness started to spread from its use just like it did with Crowley?

Aziraphale, meanwhile, placed the demon on the couch, wrapped him carefully in a throw blanket that appeared out of nowhere, and sat down beside him. Gave Crowley such a serious look that it made Crowley want to turn into a snake and crawl away into the darkest of corners. But he had no energy left even to raise a hand. His lips became prickly from the frozen moisture, even though the bookshop was as hot as a steam room. The angel must have miracle it that way…

“You will tell me everything that you know,” Aziraphale said slowly, emphasizing every word. He sat ramrod straight, looked stern, and his white wings bristled belligerently behind his back. Now, more than ever, the angel resembled a celestial warrior – the invincible guardian of the walls of Eden. The walls that he should have been protecting from the likes of Crowley. Only Aziraphale didn’t seem to be intent on killing the demon; quite the opposite, in fact. “Crowley, we’re going to try and fix this problem together. And if we can’t, I’m going to repeat the treatment I used on you in the bathroom. So think very carefully before spinning another story about Hell.”

“You threatening me?” the demon forced out, his voice sounding choked and raspy. He turned toward the fire in the fireplace to avoid looking at the traces of sickness marring the angel’s face. Because the weight of his guilt was already making it impossible for him to breathe, and, given his limited supply of magic, this could end very badly. _“Couldn’t be any worse than it already is,” _the demon huffed mentally, and winced at once from a suffocating wave of weakness that rolled over him, nearly plunging his consciousness into darkness in his mind. He was forced to grit his teeth to keep himself from fainting. “Weren’t you the one who kicked me out? I don’t unders-s-stand why you need all this-s-s, angel…”

His thoughts were jumbled. Crowley regretted not having his sunglasses to hide just how afraid he was that the angel might actually pause to consider this: _“Why, _indeed_? Why should he bother with a half-dead demon? Why should he try and pry a confession out of him? Why__-__why__-__why__?” _ But even though Crowley was absolutely terrified of being left alone, he was even more scared to imagine what would happen if he didn’t leave. If he were to continue tormenting the angel with his presence….

Aziraphale responded instantly, as if he had already decided everything for himself a long time ago. “Because I can’t have it any other way.”

“Aaah, angelic nobleness-s-s?” Crowley grimaced, weak fingers pulling the throw blanket up higher. His wings hurt. “I didn’t realize that it ex-s-s-tended to demons as well. You do realize that it’s unreasonable, right?... You don’t even know me.”

“I do.”

The demon looked up at that.

“I don’t remember you,” the angel corrected. His voice softened. “But I do know you.” The blue eyes were filled with sadness. “I just realized it too late. I understand that it would be difficult now, after everything I’ve said, but… I’m _asking you_ to believe me and to tell me what’s happening to you. Please, Crowley.”

It was strange hearing this from the angel. Wrong. It was as if the angel was asking for forgiveness… when it was the demon who was at fault…. _“__Good_ _job__! __A true emissary from Hell. You managed to plunge the angel into the quagmire of self-scrutiny, after all. Can’t help yourself, can you? Well, are you going to tell him what’s going on or are you gonna make him ask you again?”_

The angel waited. He was sitting close, the kind of close that Crowley couldn’t even dream of before the Armageddon. And now….

“Alright, alright, jus-s-st lighten up, will you.” Crowley plastered on his trademark smirk, forcing his facial muscles to obey. Painful spasms rocked through his wings. He missed his glasses. The demon was desperately trying to keep Aziraphale from realizing that he was about to collapse from weakness. “You’re bas-s-sically right about everything,” he hissed, hiding his frozen nose inside the throw. “You have amnesia, and I got this… damn thing. I didn’t notic-s-s-e it right away…. I read s-s-somewhere that you could cure it with s-s-something like a true union… but we can’t do the body s-s-switch, so…”

“A true union,” the angel echoed pensively, his gaze clouding over as if he were digging around in his mind’s library. Perhaps it was truly the case, because his memory of his books never went away. “Yes, that could mean a body switch. But it could also mean the mingling of true essences. Why didn’t you tell me this right away? No, nevermind… What was the name of that book? Who was the author?”

“Ummm…,” the demon truly tried to concentrate on the question, but his consciousness had grown too lethargic for those kinds of exercises. The world swam around him, as though his eyes were covered with water.

The angel looked carefully at Crowley, as though probing his face with his eyes, trying to see behind it, to grasp at something there. He drew himself up suddenly, his blue eyes darkening like the ocean during a storm.

“Oh, I am such a fool…,” the angel murmured, aggrieved. “You are still very much unwell….” And then he unexpectedly moved in closer, placing his palm on the back of the demon’s head like it belonged there.

The stupid throw fell down to Crowley’s shoulders.

The kiss went on for several long moments. Crowley didn’t get a chance to break free. And while the demon let out muffled bellows of protest, pressing his hands against another's chest, the angel continued to stubbornly siphon out his cold. It wasn’t a kiss in a true sense of the word – more like a simple touching of the lips. Nothing more than medicine that gets forcibly prescribed to a sick person, but even that for Crowley was _too much_. He felt as though his very willpower was being sucked out of him along with the cold.

“What the Heaven… What happened to as-s-s-sking for permiss-s-s-sion?” he hissed weakly, when Aziraphale finally pulled back. The black veins were now trailing down the angel’s pale neck, disappearing behind the collar of his shirt.

“Forgive me, d-dear, but you didn’t leave me a choice.”

The angel was breathing heavily as though he were running out of air. And then Crowley felt… something. It was as though a cloud of soft down had wrapped itself around his occult essence. The angel was trying to get through to his essence in order to mingle his own with it.

“May I?” Aziraphale asked quietly.

“No… It’s-s-s too dangerous-s-s.”

“No more dangerous than what is happening right now,” the angel countered. _“__I_ _don__’__t_ _want_ _to_ _break_ _through_ _by_ _force__. __But_ _I_ _will_ _if_ _I_ _have_ _to__,” _the demon read between the lines.

“You’re not gonna back away, right?”

“…nowhere to back away to.”

“We may just, I don't know… explode?”

“I doubt it, my dear,” the angel was serious. “I’m almost certain that this should help.”

_“… _ _almost_ _.”_

_“And what if it kills you? Is it worth it? Is anything in this entire world worth the death of a true angel?” _the demon thought. But he didn’t say it out loud. He could feel that Aziraphale wouldn’t back away. It was now merely a question of whether he would break through with force or be granted access. What was it that had scared him so much that he was prepared to go to such lengths? The demon was afraid to even imagine the answer to that question. Because the reason could have been Crowley himself, but it was also possible and more likely that the angel simply wanted to finally be rid of his amnesia. And now that sickness on top of it... It was quite possible that this was not about Crowley at all. It was quite possible that the angel wanted nothing to do with him. They were barely even friends before, and now, after all this...

The demon closed his eyes, trying to quell the rising panic. Gave a short nod of assent. He was too weak, after all, to resist, and the angel was too stubborn to abandon his idea. At the very least, it could help Aziraphale get rid of his sickness. And, besides, Crowley was too tired… dead tired of fighting it on his own.

The demon concentrated, took down his defenses a bit, already weakened as they were by the lack of magic, and readied himself for the pain.

He could now feel Aziraphale everywhere. The warm light of grace enveloped him; it had an aura of guilt about it, of worry, and of angelic love. Of tenderness, fear, and determination. One day ago Crowley had already peeked inside the angel’s soul, but it was completely different. Back then his demonic essence was hidden safely behind magic. Back then the angel was not holding his powers back with his own will. Now the heavenly light of grace was a hundred times brighter, purer, and it was impossible to look at it without crying. The cold stirred within Crowley, began to scrape around, leaving bloody furrows on his demonic essence.

What would the angel feel once that cold reached him?

_“Trust me,” _the angel asked in his mind.

Crowley exhaled and weakened his defense a bit more, and in the next instant he took it down completely…

And screamed soundlessly from the heat that filled his entire being.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're almost there! One chapter left :)


	12. Chapter 12

  
Crowley stretched with a long yawn and turned lazily onto his side, wrapping himself in the blanket up to his ears. The blanket smelled of vanilla and cinnamon, and that was good. It was infinitely _right_. The demon felt as though he was being cradled within a tender embrace of sun-kissed waves.

In his mind’s eye he could still see the vestiges of his dreams, but they were not the viscous stifling nightmares that usually plagued his nights. These dreams were soft and caring visions of something that never happened before. Of neat pale hands, of arms wrapped around him and of kisses, of sincere, quiet words of love...

For the first time Crowley felt like he had gotten a good night’s sleep, felt well-rested and full of energy. He felt so warm, so overwhelmingly good, that he didn’t want to open his eyes and face reality _at all_. Humanity was capable of making trouble for itself perfectly well without any interference from the dark forces, so one specific demon could easily sleep a year or tw…

_“Crowley!”_

The cry of his name was so inappropriately desperate that Crowley at first thought that he had simply dreamed it. But then the cry was joined by the stomping of feet and the opening creak of the door. The demon opened one eye, still hoping that he was just hearing things, and immediately locked gazes with disheveled-looking Aziraphale.

_What_ _the__…_

It was only then that Crowley realized that he was not sleeping in his own home… because he would have never thought to hang tartan curtains on his windows. In fact, there were no windows in his own bedroom to begin with...

The angel crossed the room in two big steps and was beside him before the demon had a chance to voice his question. And then he fell down on his knees beside the bed, grasped the demon’s hand with both of his, buried his face in the mattress, and, _oh, the horror, _began to sob quietly, gulping down his tears.

Crowley wanted to pinch himself, as hard as possible, too. What the devil was going on? Any remnants of sleep vanished as if by magic.

“What the… What’s-s-s going on? What happened?” the demon asked in alarm, raising himself up on his elbows and examining Aziraphale’s ethereal essence with his mind’s eye, looking for hidden wounds. But everything looked normal apart from the heavy aura of guilt and sadness. “Are you in danger? S-s-s-something wrong with Adam? … Talk to me!”

“N-no… It’s not…,” the angel rasped out indistinctly, grasping the demon’s hand harder, as if Crowley could unexpectedly disappear somewhere. It was strange; it scared Crowley because he knew that he had no intentions of disappearing anywhere. Wild horses weren’t likely to be able to drag him out of this room while an angel sat here crying so inconsolably. _His_ angel.

“Aziraphale, what’s the matter? What do I need to do?”

Aziraphale pulled his face away from the blanket, looked up at him with miserable red-rimmed eyes. But whatever the demon was prepared to hear, the words that came out of the angel’s mouth were not it.

Because what the angel said was, “I have wronged you so… so terribly, Crowley. I will understand if you never forgive me. The important thing is th-that you… that you’re okay, that you don’t… Good Heavens, how do I get you warm? You’re cold as ice….” The angel squeezed his eyes shut, holding back another rush of tears. 

_“He’s gone mad,” _the demon observed with detachment. His mind stuttered into a kind of stupor that he was having a hard time getting out of. 

“Cold as ice?”

But Crowley felt warm, much warmer than before…. _Before? _His memory creaked like a rusted bicycle. Crowley remembered how they stopped the Armageddon, how they switched bodies afterwards…. That all went well, didn’t it?

Aziraphale looked thinner, dimmer somehow, and even his favorite bowtie was a bit crooked. The angel’s face, tear-swollen though it was, looked clean and pure… That seemed important, though the demon couldn’t remember why.

Aziraphale’s shoulders were shaking so desperately that the demon’s heart clenched with sorrow. He wanted to embrace the angel, to hold him as close as he possibly could to get this nonsense the angel came up with to burn, to crumble to pieces, to disappear all to hell. But Crowley was too afraid that a show of emotions would only scare the angel more. They only ever held hands, and only a couple times, too.

Not knowing what else to do, the demon gently squeezed the angel’s shoulder, trying to convey everything he was thinking and feeling through that small gesture. His thoughts spun chaotically as more and more memories floated up to the surface…. There was the plot they hatched to fool their respective head offices…. Then the two of them exchanging the stories of their successful switch as they sit on their favorite bench in the park. Then the handshake to get back in their respective bodies… and then… 

_Then…_

Maybe it was that “then” that was the problem?

“Listen, angel, I’m sorry, but…,” Crowley mumbled finally in utter confusion, “but… what happened? Erm… I don’t remember anything after we switched our bodies back.”

The angel froze. He seemed to have been taken aback even more than the demon. His mouth opened about to say something, and he froze like that as though struck by lightning. “You don’t remember _anything_?” he asked again, peering incredulously into the yellow eyes.

“Not a bloody thing!” Crowley responded with feeling. “Although that doesn’t concern me as much as your weird behavior…. How long was I asleep for?”

“Almost three years.”

“Oh…”

“I was afraid that… that you wouldn’t wake up at all, my dear,” the angel said bitterly, shaking his head. “You used so much of your power! Oh, so many terrible things happened. I had completely forgotten you, and then you nearly died because of me… because of my…”

“Hey, hey, hey, hold your holy horses,” the demon cut him off mid-sentence, because he was afraid that if Aziraphale were to say anything else, he would start crying again, and Crowley was never taught how to calm an angel in a fit of hysterics. So he simply decided to change topics, especially since the angel could do with some fattening up as his clothes were looking a bit too loose on him. And that was something that hasn’t happened since creation. “I’m actually starving right now. Maybe we could celebrate my return from hibernation with a couple glasses of wine?”

The angel blinked, bewildered:

“Wine isn’t food, Crowley. It’s not used to satisfy hunger.”

“Really? I can never get used to that… Well, then, how about some crêpes?”

“That we can have as much as you wish.” Aziraphale couldn’t hold back a smile. His tears were drying rapidly; perhaps a miracle was involved, too.

“Well, then, what are we waiting for?”

***

Together they came down the stairs – the angel walked behind him, and the demon could feel his pensive gaze on the back of his head. _“That’s okay,” _the demon decided. _“It’s better than have him crying again. Angels_ _shouldn__’__t_ _be_ _crying__. __It__’__s_ _bad_ _for_ _them__. __Unnatural__. __Especially crying over a demon… regardless of what the white-feathered one’s imagination was telling him… Now if he could just figure out what was going on.” _

_“Good job there!” _Crowley congratulated himself mentally. _“Drove the angel to tears and forgot everything. Beelzebub will issue you a reward for this, if you ask.” _

The angel meanwhile got started on crêpes, and Crowley, having sat down at the table, miracle his glasses and… froze from a sudden stabbing sensation in his chest. As though someone shoved a needle under his ribs. But then a plate of delicious-smelling crêpes was placed before him, distracting him from the odd sensation.

Crowley speared the first crêpe with his fork, trying to act like nothing was bothering him, and shoved it in his mouth. Tried his best not to choke under the angel’s intent gaze.

“These are very good,” he praised around a mouthful, even though he couldn’t taste anything. “How about you eat a couple, too, hmm?”

“My dear,” the angel began quietly in a voice that didn’t bode well, “so you don’t remember anything? From what point on?”

The combination of the angel’s gaze, his tone of voice and his nervously interlocked fingers was making Crowley uneasy. They appeared to be heading for a “serious” conversation. And the demon was already cursing that “forgotten” Crowley, no matter what it was that he had done.

“Erm…,” he stalled, trying to come up with a good way to avoid this conversation. Because it was obvious that whatever happened was still upsetting the angel, and the last thing the demon wanted was to bring Aziraphale to tears again. “Well, I remember us switching back, and then darkness. But you know, I’m not even all that curious about what happened after. The important thing is that I’m here, right? Who cares about a couple of forgotten years, the other six thousand are still intact, right? If I said or did something wrong, I’m sorry. But don’t be upset, I’m a demon, after all, it’s my job…”

“Tell me, Crowley,” the angel interrupted him. “Is anything bothering you right now? How are you feeling?”

“Great,” the demon responded automatically, thinking back to the odd sensation in his chest.

The angel shook his head sadly. He was looking at Crowley with impossibly intent and infinitely sorrowful eyes, as if he were peering into something he alone could see, something he hasn’t noticed before but was seeing now and was terribly upset about it. The demon felt a lump in his throat and was suddenly very grateful for having had the forethought to miracle himself a pair of shades. Who knew what the angel could have seen in him otherwise.

“Tell me,” Aziraphale repeated, “if you were suddenly feeling unwell, so unwell that you could be dying… for real. Would you come to me? Would you ask me for help?”

Silence felt woolen. Crowley tried to capture the meaning of the words, but it kept escaping him, slipping like water through his fingers. The angel was extremely bothered by something, and that something was directly tied to the demon, so he needed to answer _very very carefully. Very_ _correctly__. _So Crowley smirked as widely as he could and said,

“What kind of nonsense is that, angel? Why the hell would I be dying? And if I were to, of course I would tell you. Otherwise, who would I have dancing gavotte at my funeral, eh?”

Aziraphale’s face was pale, and his eyes were so blue and bright that Crowley wanted to drown in them. And he knew, even before he finished his response, that he chose the wrong tactic.

“Why are you lying to me, dear?” the angel asked, deadly serious, and Crowley had to fight the urge to hunch in on himself.

His chest ached with renewed force, as though an old wound has been ripped open again, the phantom pain echoing in his shoulders and fingers. The angel stood, his heavy gaze still trained on Crowley, leaned forward, keeping one palm planted on the tabletop. Reached toward Crowley, who sat frozen before him, fingers ghosting over Crowley’s hair, tracing the lines of his jaws and chin. Murmured in that deadly serious voice of his that made shivers run down Crowley’s spine,

“You are beautiful, my darling. I want to spend an eternity with you. I want you to be happy. And it terrifies me that I was the one who nearly killed you. I’m afraid to think that if you are ever in danger, you won’t tell me. Like you didn’t tell me once before. I’m afraid and I don’t know what to do with that fear.”

If Crowley were human, his heart would have probably stopped.

“What are you talking about, angel?” His voice betrayed him, cracked on the words, giving Crowley away. The demon wanted to get up and leave, wanted to laugh it all off, but the only thing he found himself capable of doing is to take in a half-breath and to watch… _watch _as the angel leaned in closer, as he put his open palm on Crowley’s chest, as he blushed to the tips of his ears when his face ended up a couple centimeters away from Crowley’s own.

_“This can’t be happening,”_ he thought, bewildered, as the angel’s lips, hot and soft, brushed the corner of his mouth.

_“I must still be sleeping,”_ he decided when he himself turned his head slightly and returned the kiss, pressing his lips softly, almost chastely, against another’s.

It felt as though a black hole had opened up inside him. Slippery thoughts spilled forth hissing from the darkness. _“__There_ _goes_ _your_ _friendship__.” “__You__’__ve_ _ruined_ _everything__, __you_ _ruin_ _everything_ _you_ _touch__.” “__Do_ _you_ _really_ _think_ _he_ _needs_ _you__? __You’re just a demon!” “He will fall because of you, is that what you wanted?” “Leave, run before it’s too late!”_

_“Run!”_

His chest hurt as though someone had thrown acid onto his skin and it now sizzled, eating away his bones, muscles, spilling into his blood. Crowley tried to get up. _“Run!”_ thrummed frantically in his head. But someone restrained him. Wrapped him in an embrace that could not possibly have been real. That embrace was twisting everything inside him, crumpling it. It felt like someone’s foot pressing down on a steel spring, pushing it into the floor. And he dreaded to think what would happen if that spring were to jump free, to recoil. Who would it hit, what would it destroy?

“I need to… I need to go,” the demon forced out.

“Look at me, my dear!”

“I _need to…_”

“Look at me, please!”

Obediently, Crowley raised his eyes, realizing with a start that they were no longer covered with glasses. When did the angel take them off? When did he get so close?

“I need to tell you something before you leave.” The angel was standing close, keeping one hand on the demon’s back, the other on his shoulder. His voice was kind and worried, and he was peering intently at him, somewhere deep inside, not into his eyes but beyond them, as though he was seeing something there that was visible only to him. “It doesn’t excuse what I did, but I truly did always believe that you understood anyway… _about us_. That you knew that you were not alone, and that you were never alone since that meeting on the Wall. That’s why I never told you … I’m begging you to forgive me for that. I realized only now that you truly didn’t know… Didn’t know at all, didn’t even dare think it. You thought you were alone, standing all alone _against everyone._”

“Not everyone,” Crowley interjected without conscious thought. His head was spinning, his legs felt like rubber, and if Aziraphale were not holding him, he would have already fallen.

“Not everyone,” the angel agreed sorrowfully. “You were never against me. Were always on my side. But you didn’t know that I was always on your side as well. Even when I said those awful words to you about you not being my friend, even then I was sure that you understood, that you knew… That I would always stand_ behind you_. That I would always shield you. Choose you if something happens. I thought you knew… but I forgot that I never told you about it. That’s why, Crowley, I will say it now. I am with you and I always _will be._ I love you as much as an angel is capable of loving if he directs all of his love onto one single being in the entire world. And even if I lose all of my memory, my love won’t disappear, and if you ask for my help, any help, I will help you in an instant. Just keep that in mind, okay? I can’t keep you here, but if you want to stay, you will make me happy…”

He fell silent, looking at Crowley with concern, while the latter stood slack-jawed, his brain refusing to digest so much inconceivable stuff that happened to him in one morning. 

It was only yesterday that they were barely considered friends. It was only yesterday that Crowley would smirk, trying to hide just how desperately he needed the angel, and that he waited, _waited_, for the angel to politely tell him to leave. He wouldn’t be surprised if that happened very-very soon. But he couldn’t help but be surprised by what he just heard. _Loves__?_ An angel loves a demon? Aziraphale _loves_ him? Aziraphale is asking him to stay? There’s no reason for him to joke like this, is there? It would have been too cruel for the angel. _Too much_ — for Crowley.

“Yes, I…,” his voice was raspy, “I… I’m….” Crowley didn’t know where to look, how to handle the overwhelming disbelief, fear and hope. He was suddenly terrified that he never answered his angel. Maybe the latter didn’t know either, just like Crowley didn’t, so he added hurriedly, “Me too… I… I Love you, too, angel.” And shuddered at how pathetic these words sounded. How weak and absurd they were, incapable of reflecting even a tiny portion of what the demon was truly feeling.

“May I kiss you?” the angel asked, looking at him with tenderness and worry. Tears were once again glistening in the blue depths.

Crowley nodded before he had a chance to think about it. And then the angel drew him closer and held him so tightly that the demon felt the heat of his skin even through his clothes, felt the nervous shiver in the angel’s ethereal essence, felt the responding shudder in his own occult energy that seemed to echo in tune with the other.

The kiss was slow, careful, overflowing with tenderness, but it grew hotter, closer, brighter with every moment. The demon didn’t even notice how he began to clutch at the angel, afraid that he would disappear from his arms the way everything always disappeared that Crowley ever held dear.

“I love you, my darling,” the angel whispered between kisses that moved on to his neck and then slid further down.

Something shuddered within the demon’s chest, the ground shifted underneath his feet, as though something inside him had reached its climax and was ready to burst at any moment like an overinflated balloon. One more kiss, the touch of warm palms along his back, toward his waist and lower, the fervent, troubled whisper… and the pressure inside his chest became unbearable. And in the next moment Crowley arched backwards, nearly breaking in half… but the angel didn’t let him, the angel was holding him tightly, pressing him against his chest as though there was nothing in the world more precious to him than Crowley.

“Shhh, it’s okay, it’s okay, my dear,” the angel whispered soothingly. “It’s all definitely over now. You believe me? I won’t ever leave you. You are so stubborn… my stubborn, stupid demon. I couldn’t have gone on without you. I _do not know_ myself without you. I have wronged you so terribly, my darling, so terribly...”

Aziraphale’s words were muffled, as though coming through a thick wad of cotton. Memories of the last days were washing over Crowley, while the pain in his chest was slowly dying down. His consciousness cleared, as though up until now it had been clouded with alcohol. Colors grew brighter, the cold under his ribs dissolved, disappearing without a trace. And it was only when it disappeared that Crowley realized how terribly cold he had actually been all this time. What he took as warmth was but a weak spark of the former flame.

“A t-true union?” the demon rasped, sagging boneless in the angel’s arms.

“The very same, my dear. The last time I managed to get rid of most of the symptoms, but I wasn’t able to fix the problem completely…”

_“Wasn’t able to get past the wall of distrust that you surrounded yourself with because of me,”_ the angel thought, sorrowful. Out loud he said, “I needed to confess everything to you before… _about us_. If I only knew…”

_“...how painful it was for you,”_ the angel wanted to add, but kissed Crowley instead. He felt Crowley warming up in his arms, felt him relaxing, and, thank the Lord, the angel no longer sensed that buzzing, prickly cold inside the demon. That cold disappeared without a trace. The angel felt like crying with relief, but he knew how sensitive Crowley was to his tears, so he kept them at bay and chose to bury his face in the fiery strands of hair, breathing in Crowley’s smell and unable to get enough.

For three years he wouldn’t leave the bookshop for even a moment for fear that Crowley would wake up alone. But his even greater fear was that the demon wouldn’t wake up at all.

The angel couldn’t remember his past only for a few days, but even that was enough to cause a nearly irreparable damage. Had Crowley not forced the angel’s wings out into the open, the angel wouldn’t have had a reason to look for him so soon. What if Aziraphale hadn’t noticed back then at the bar that Crowley had healed his cut, what if he hadn’t noticed the lonely idling Bentley… There were so many “what ifs” that could have led to a terrible outcome. And all because of the angel’s stupid, wounded pride. Which one of them then is worthy of the white wings after what happened?

For the last three years Aziraphale thought often and with great sadness about how lonely Crowley must have been. About how he must have felt like he was banging his head against the unassailable Wall of Eden. And nearly crashed to death as a result. The angel managed to draw some of the cold into himself at the last moment. The sickness retreated but didn’t disappear completely, and Crowley, after the partial merging of essences, fell into a long healing sleep.

But even like this he was recovering too slowly, his magic was coming back by tiny bits, and the sickness was trickling down toward his solar plexus like drops of mercury. That fateful evening, the most terrifying evening in Aziraphale’s life, the angel recovered completely and regained his memory… but Crowley… It was more difficult for Crowley, he was unable to open up fully, was too afraid of getting hurt. _Was afraid that Aziraphale would hurt him when he sees what the demon was hiding inside him for all these years._

But now, finally, everything was done right. Crowley recovered, and Aziraphale would be damned if he let the most important being in his life get this close to the edge ever again.

He kissed his demon’s temple and carried him to the sofa, where he wrapped him in a warm blanket and then wrapped his arms around his shoulders, putting them face to face, warming him with his magic, caressing him with his hands everywhere he could reach, but carefully, without pressure, just to ensure himself that Crowley was here, beside him, alive. _Alive__. _

“S-s-so why did you decide that were dating?” Crowley hissed suddenly, making himself comfortable in the angel’s embrace. He was still shivering, and he was trying to hide behind sarcasm, as was his wont. 

“One very nice customer told me…”

“And you believed her just like that?”

“You took me on dates, so… I should have probably talked to you right away, my dear, but I was too confused to be thinking straight.” The angel fell silent to avoid pouring out apologies and regrets that have accumulated inside him over the years, enough to fill an entire ocean. Because right now Crowley wouldn’t have been able to interpret them correctly. He would withdraw under the feeling of his own guilt, which has worn into him like second skin. No, there would be time for those later, later...

“So all I had to do to get a confession out of you was to die?” the demon whispered with a shadow of his former smirk. His powers were rapidly coming back, but his voice was still strained and unsure.

“No, my dear, that was definitely unnecessary. All you had to do was ask,” the angel responded gravely. “Before, I couldn’t even imagine that you would want this kind of relationship. But if you had offered, I would have said yes. I would have probably thought about it for a year or two, but I would have said yes. Because I myself wondered sometimes how it could have been...”

“... well, you’re full of surprises, aren’t you?” the demon hid his grin, burying his face in the angel’s shoulder.

“And I definitely enjoy kissing.”

“Then you will definitely like all the res-s-st.”

The demon squeezed his eyes shut as though trying to gather his courage, and then pulled the angel in, kissing him almost openly, without fear, having finally, it seemed, dared to fully believe the reality of it all…

… and if not, Aziraphale had all of eternity to convince him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, there we are - another completed project. I'm so proud of myself LOL  
(now on to new adventures)


End file.
